Name some Prestige CDs you find underrated

[mjzee]

Inspired by the ongoing thread about Blue Note CDs that are overrated... As has been noted by many posters over the years, both here and on the BNBB, a bigger problem is that too many Prestige CDs are underrated. Whether because of the sheer number of titles released in many different subgenres by Prestige, the mystique of the BN extra day of rehearsals, or good management of the BN brand through the CD era, there are probably far more great Prestige titles that are unknown or undervalued than there are Blue Notes. So, excluding the obvious (like the Coltrane titles), what are some Prestiges you think cry out for more awareness and a larger audience?

[GA Russell]

My first hardcore jazz album was Richard "Groove" Holmes' Soul Message, and it remains a favorite to this day.

I bought it because it included Misty, which was a hit on the radio at the time. However, Misty has become my least favorite track on the album.

A few years ago it was given the RVG treatment, so maybe it is not as unappreciated as I think.

Groove's second Prestige album, Living Soul, is in my view also far less known than it ought to be.

[Joe]

Goodness, so many choices! Though there are distinct "periods" when it comes to Prestige's output (Weinstock, Edwards, Schiltten, etc.)

Three to begin:

Zoot Sims / Pepper Adams, ENCOUNTER (though I have a vague sense that this was a licensed session [?])

Bobby Timmons, THE SOUL MAN (quartet with Wayne Shorter, 1966)

Gil Melle, GIL'S GUESTS

[926am]

I really like the Monk Prestige albums, they usually get overshadowed by the Blue Notes before and Riverside after.

[xybert]

I remember feeling that the lower rated Coltrane Prestige albums were underrated relative to the higher rated ones, as i really dug all of them.

Thing with a lot of Prestige gems is, objectively i can see why they are not basking in glory, but subjectively i just love them. I'll try to think of some that i believe are genuinely underrated masterpieces.

[Milestones]

We should not forget that Sonny Rollins did a good amount of work on Prestige, and of course we all hold Saxophone Colossus as a classic. But one that may be underrated is Worktime. The mere fact that Max Roach drummed on most of Rollins' Prestige sessions makes them classics.

I think Soul by Coleman Hawkins (with a big assist from Kenny Burrell) was on Prestige, or some offshoot. Very nice session.

Didn't Red Garland record extensively for Prestige? Soul Junction I'm sure is highly regarded, but one should look at some of the others.

Edited September 4, 2014 by Milestones

[Milestones]

Let's think about the works by Eric Dolphy and Yusef Lateef recorded for Prestige.

[Larry Kart]

Red Garland's "Rediscovered Masters 2":

http://www.amazon.com/Rediscovered-Masters-2-Red-Garland/dp/B000000YYY/ref=sr_1_2?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1409801436&sr=1-2&keywords=red+garland+rediscovered+masters

There's a trance-like version of "Mr. Wonderful" there that must be heard to be believed.

"Jackie McLean and Co." with Bill Hardman

Oliver Nelson's "Afro-American Sketches"

The Milt Jackson Quartet with Horace Silver

Also, Milestones, did you mean to say that you thought "Worktime" was overrated? To me, that's an epochal album.

[Milestones]

I for sure meant "underrated." I will edit.

For a time I was more a fan of Prestige than Blue Note. For the work alone of Miles, Coltrane, Rollins, and Monk....it is label of great distinction and prestige (sorry).

[Larry Kart]

Also, Kenny Dorham's' "Quiet Kenny"

Don Ellis' "New Ideas," with striking work on vibes from Al Francis

Hal McKusick's "Triple Exposure," with Billy Byers, Eddie Costa, Paul Chambers, and Charlie Persip

http://www.amazon.com/Triple-Exposure-Hal-Mckusick/dp/B000000Z8L/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_3?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1409802454&sr=1-3-fkmr1&keywords=hal+mckusick+prestige#cm_cr_dpwidget

Probably Hal's best record for his own playing and I think his last as a leader (earlier RCA and Decca albums of his feature superb writing by George Russell and others). The for one time only Costa-Chambers-Persip rhythm section has a special flavor and intensity; Chambers is in exceptional form and is recorded with great presence.

[JSngry]

Underrated? How about virtually unknown?

How about almost unknown?

How about both underrated, all but unknown, and all but unloved except by those who embrace the scourned?

And finally(?) how about "I thought he only made records for Blue Note?!?!?!"

[JSngry]

Ok, fianlly, maybe neither underrated, unknown, nor unloved, but far from universally acknowledged, much less acclaimed, but dammit, if that tenor sound does not get to you in some form or fashion...are you really there?

Here's a proposition - somebody make a "best of" compilation of Jug's pre- & post-prison Prestige work and then let's play contrast and compare. Nothing will be setlled, but it would be one helluva damngood party.

[soulpope]

and all his other outings on Prestige.....

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

One thing you've gotta say about Prestige - Bob Weinstock LOVED tenor players. In the fifties/early sixties, there were

Arnett Cobb

Booker Ervin

Budd Johnson

Buddy Tate

Coleman Hawkins

Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis

Gene Ammons

Jimmy Forrest

John Coltrane

King Curtis

Lucky Thompson

Red Holloway

Sonny Rollins

Sonny Stitt

Willis Jackson

Late sixties/early seventies

Dexter Gordon

Gene Ammons (still!)

Houston Person

Illinois Jacquet

Rusty Bryant

Sonny Stitt (still!)

Teddy Edwards

Willis Jackson (encore!)

Now that's a LIST! And most of those players WOULDN'T have got gigs, at the time they got gigs at Prestige, with other labels. (OK, Teddy only made 2 albums for Prestige but hadn't made an album for the previous 4 years and didn't make another for another 7.) And most of those guys' work for Prestige is underrated.

And, as Jim said - George Braith!!!!!

And you could do another list of organists:

Charles Earland

Charles Kynard

Don Patterson

Freddie Roach

Jack McDuff

Johnny 'Hammond' Smith

Larry Young

Leon Spencer

Rhoda Scott (before she went to France)

Groove Holmes

Shirley Scott

Sonny Phillips

Trudi Pitts (oh well, I think even I underrate her )

None of those organists gets the rating they deserve for their Prestige material.

MG

[Joe]

Another "up" for that Hal McKusick record. Ditto the A. K. Salim and Don Friedman, which are about as far out as Prestige (hell, anybody, almost) ever got.

A few more:

Jaki Byard, HERE'S JAKI and HI-FLY (trios)

Teddy Charles, COLLABORATION: WEST and EVOLUTION (early experiments in modality, serial composition and other avant-garde techniques; for my $$, the best pure playing by Short Rogers to be heard)

Jerome Richardson, ROAMIN' WITH RICHARDSON (featuring a beautiful, beautiful rendition of "Warm Valley," featuring JR on baritone sax)

Dizzy Reece, ASIA MINOR (the equal, easily, of any of his BN dates)

On the Coltrane side of things... LUSH LIFE is, in one sense, a miscellany / complete grab-bag, and the trio tracks with Earl May (did he ever sound better?) and AT are a reclamation project (according to the liner notes, they rolled tape even though the piano player failed to show), but what a perfectly sequenced LP it is. Still, IMO, some of Trane's best ballad playing.

Walt Dickerson, of course, is perennially underrated. Not throwing shade on Bobby Hutcherson, but Walt went there first, and then some.

Teo Macero and The Prestige Jazz Quartet (and the lone Prestige Jazz Quartet album at that, which sports a killer version of "Friday the 13th")

Edited September 4, 2014 by Joe

[mikelz777]

Rusty Bryant - Rusty Bryant Returns

Charles Kynard - Soul Brotherhood

Jon Eardley - From Hollywood To New York, The Jon Eardley Seven

Eric Kloss - Eric Kloss & The Rhythm Section, About Time

Charles McPherson - Bebop Revisited

[kh1958]

For solo piano, there's Red Garland, Red Alone (Moodsville), and Jaki Byard, Solo.

[Milestones]

There are definitely some titles listed I would check out if they were not so obscure and hard to find.

[colinmce]

One longtime favorite is Johnny Griffin's Change Of Pace. Some really, really interesting stuff happening on there with two basses. Julius Watkins plays on some of it too but what I really dig is the double bass thing-- Bill Lee & Larry Gales with Ben Riley underneath. They stretch a huge canvas for Griffin to play over. Fantastic art, too.

[Larry Kart]

One longtime favorite is Johnny Griffin's Change Of Pace. Some really, really interesting stuff happening on there with two basses. Julius Watkins plays on some of it too but what I really dig is the double bass thing-- Bill Lee & Larry Gales with Ben Riley underneath. They stretch a huge canvas for Griffin to play over. Fantastic art, too.

"Change of Pace" was a Riverside date.

[colinmce]

Right you are. Oops.

[Larry Kart]

If we're going to extend our reach to Prestige's subsidiary Swingville, there's Coleman Hawkins' fantastic "Hawk Eyes" with Charlie Shavers, the Pee Wee Russell with Buck Clayton, the Tiny Grimes with Hawkins (the one with "Until the Real Thing Comes Along"), "For Basie" with Paul Quinichette, Shad Collins, Nat Pierce, Walter Page (his final recording), and Jo Jones, and a good deal more.

[johnblitweiler]

A number of the Swingville albums, like Bud Freeman-Shorty Baker, Coleman Hawkins-Tiny Grimes, Coleman Hawkins All-Stars, Hawkins-Charlie Shavers, Claude Hopkins, Arnett Cobb, etc., were seriously underappreciated when they were issued.

Has anyone here read Weinstock's novel about a jazz-record producer who falls in love with a long-haired country singer? I'm curious about it.

[clifford_thornton]

Agreed on Don Ellis, A.K. Salim, and Dizzy Reece - Asia Minor is a great album and showed Dizzy moving in the direction that he'd solidify during the 1970s.

On the Teddy Charles front, the Prestige Jazz Quartet album is a killer.

The four Ahmed Abdul-Malik LPs are excellent and are virtually un-discussed (rare too!).

Lots of nice ethnographic and American folk recordings in the Prestige catalog, all cheap if you find them as used LPs. I particularly like the Ruth Ben-Zvi album.

[B. Clugston]

Pepper Adams' Encounter, Kenny Dorham's Quiet Kenny and Gil Melle's recordings immediately spring to mind.