Sil Austin Plays Pretty For The People (Mercury)

[mjzee]

Back when I worked in a jazz record store in the late '70's - early '80's, I'd always see the middle-aged guys buy this record, and I was intrigued.  Obviously an older record (from 1961, turns out), still in print, and selling steadily - maybe not as much as Kind Of Blue, but pretty regularly.  I always wanted to hear it, never got a chance.  Never saw it reissued on CD.  I came across a used copy at a Half Priced Books recently, and bought it.  Wow.  Not really jazz; he plays the tunes pretty straight, with strings and backing choir - think of the things Mercury was doing with Dinah Washington at the time, that kind of sound, almost a mix of jazz and country.  A mix of Coleman Hawkins and Patsy Cline, if you can picture that!  Austin has a powerful tenor voice, it's so pretty and muscular, cuts right through the arrangements.  Just a pleasure to listen to.  I highly recommend you find a copy.

 

[JSngry]

It's a, how you say, seduction (or post-seduction) record.

This record was all over the place when I was a kid too, I'd see it in the same stores in the regular and cutout bins! I heard it then, and didn't really have any appreciation for what was being done, sounded like A Boots Randolph Record For Black People, maybe it was, once Boots started making strings records of non-country songs, who knows what was driving what, not me?

Anyway, based on exposure to this one record, I formed the impression of Sil Austin as nothing more than A Black Boots Randolph, which was, of course, my loss, because as time revealed, the guy was one of the great vintage R&B tenor players. Pretty much ALL of his records were "commercial" in intent, and this intent was of its time, and yeah, Sil Austin could play, pretty for the people and/or otherwise.

Another unfortunate side-effect was that it took me waaay too damn long to realize that Sil Austin & Syl Johnson were not the same person. OUCH!

[mjzee]

Yeah, this is pretty wonderful, in a diametrically-opposite way:

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

THIS

Is not like his other Mercury albums.

Three tracks -

No 1 Sil (11:50)

Kenny's blues (3:50)

Take the A train (14:00)

Personnel

Austin, Prysock (ts), Dave Martin (p), Kenny Burrell, Everett Barksdale (g), Milt Hinton (b), Panama Francis (d). New York, 1959.

As FINE a two tenor battle as you could ask for.

I picked up the CD fairly cheap, in Nagoya, Japan, in 2002. Don't expect it's available any more, but anyone seeing it, don't hesitate.

I also had the Plays pretty LP back in the late sixties and still have this

On Shelby Singleton's SSI label. Some good some bad but the overall feeling is one I don't ever want to relinquish. Probably easy to find used. But

Has most of the tracks. CD Universe and Amazon have it (well, I think it's the same) but it looks like this

But I prefer the one I've got :G

MG

[Big Beat Steve]

True, MG, due to the length of the tracks and the featured sax men stretching out this Austin/Prysock LP is not like his others. But apart from that one I always liked the ones shown below (of which I was able to get quite affordable original pressings) better than his soft mood sounds like on "Plays Pretty For The People" (a phrase I had always associated with Louis Prima anyway). Comercial - yes (in a way very much of its time, as JSangrey says) but powerful blowing anyway. So to me he was not so much a black Boots Randolph (nice analogy anyway) but rather a somewhat grittier Earl Bostic.

(Yes, those matching covers are corny but very period-like and a document of their times )

 

[JSngry]

The Boots Randolph comparison/analogy/whatever,was, of ocurse(?) relevant to my knowledge of "things" ca. 1972, which was when I first heard the Austin record.

Not sure if anybody wants or needs to know or care, but Randolph at that time was making mostly MOR Monument records like this:

 

Of course, what I came to learn was that Boots Randolph had roots in R&B tenor, had actually been some kind of a "jazz musician" before becoming a Nashville session player (that's him on vintage those Brenda Lee hits, and Bobby Jones for one knew him as such, when he was), so the linkage between him and Sil Austin was probably the other way around than how I first figured, Play Pretty...being the first I had heard of Austin, and MOR Randolph being somebody my environment forced me to encounter at a relentless pace, resistance was indeed futile.

What I still find interesting, though, is that whenever you aim for that "middle of the road" market, no matter where you come from, where you end up is pretty much the same place, and that a lot of guys who make pretty forgettable records do so while handling the instrument itself quite nicely.

[Big Beat Steve]

I've only got one of his 2-LP "hit" compilations on RCA Camden (therefore predating his Monument period as far as I can tell) which was bought mainly for the presence of "Percolator" (a tune that for some reason got VERY regular airplay on oldies radio shows here in my very early music collecting days from the mid-70s and does get stuck in your ear once you've heard it). Some of the tunes there show his R&B roots, others are VERY MOR-ish. Apart from that, his presence on many Nashville country recordings of course makes him impossible to pass by if you listen to that kind of music at all.

I agree, though, that it was Sil Austin and the other 50s R&B tenor sax men (from Plas Johnson through Red Prysock or Sam The Man Taylor - one who also did VERY MOR stuff that you would not associate with R&B at all - and all the others) rather set the pattern for white sax men and not the other way round.

Edited December 11, 2015 by Big Beat Steve

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I rather think the best of those white sax men influenced by the players Steve mentioned was Ace Cannon. Here's his first version, recorded for Sun, of his 1961 hit, 'Tuff', which was a big hit on Hi. Unfortunately, YouTube doesn't seem to want to play anything today, but here's the link.

Well, that played OK on Organissimo, so here's the version on Hi.

No, for the second time, YouTube brings up yet another of the innumerable versions of the tune he recorded! Try and find it yourselves

MG

[JSngry]

Was it here or on Board Krypton that I told the Ace Cannon drinking hair tonic/urinating himself while passing out onstage stories? No need to repeat, the topics alone tell enough.

I was never a fan before hearing them, but better understood why after. The guy was really not much of a player, not in comparison to any of those guys.

[mjzee]

Back to Sil Austin.  Found this on the net: http://thefunkshow.com/joomla/index.php%3Foption%3Dcom_content%26view%3Darticle%26id%3D126:he-plays-pretty-for-the-people-the-story-of-sil-austin-%26catid%3D34:introduction