One of the many areas of Jazz where the Ken Burns documentary fails abysmally is with the Organ groups. I don’t know offhand when they began to become popular, but certainly they are an institution in Jazz by the mid 1950s. The casual Jazz fan is likely aware of Jimmy Smith; who does get his name mentioned and his picture shown for a brief moment in Burns’ mini-series. Smith is certainly the most influential and most successful of the Jazz organists. But perhaps more intriguing is the “John Coltrane of Hammond Organ”, Mr. Larry Young.
Born on October 7th, 1940 in Newark NJ, Larry Young began his career playing in the vein of Jimmy Smith. His first recordings come out in 1960. As Larry matures, he embraces modal jazz and takes that sort of approach to his organ playing. He experiments using the organ for free jazz. In 1969 he joins up with Tony Williams and John McLaughlin to create what might be the first “fusion” band and then goes on to appear on Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew. With Williams he performs for huge audiences in 1970 and when his time with Williams is over by 1973, Larry begins to become somewhat confused by the state of the music industry. He records two funky jazz records in the mid 1970s which do not sell at all. His last recording from 1977 seems impossible to find. In 1978 he had signed a lucrative record deal with Warner Brothers and was preparing for some high profile gigs in NYC (I assume playing music more like his traditional jazz as this was supposed to have been a very promising series of events) but he died suddenly on March 30th of 1978. 37 years old.
Larry Young is best known for his 1965 recording, “Unity”. This record is to many one of the greatest recordings in the history of Jazz. If I were to make a list of top 10 recordings in Jazz, Unity would be on the list along with Kind of Blue, Sketches of Spain, and A Love Supreme.
Please step on through the Orange squiggle. First stop, the greatest city in the USA: Newark NJ.
Um….OK…Newark is NOT the greatest city in the country. But it is someplace where I have spent quite a bit of my professional life. A much maligned place, it is actually quite a complicated and intriguing place. More on that later.
Welcome to my Sunday Jazz bloggings. If you have never read any of my postings before, I do my best to post a diary about Jazz music and its related genres every Sunday around 10pm EST. I missed last week because it was my birthday and then I wound up coming down with a small virus of sorts by Sunday afternoon.
Maybe I havn’t run across the correct writings, but I don’t notice people saying something that seems somewhat obvious to me: The bridge between Jazz and Rock and Roll and between Jazz and Jazz-Rock fusion is at least in part created through the Organ groups. One only needs to acknowledge three extremely influential rock bands from the 1960s to recognize this: The Vanilla Fudge, The (Young) Rascals, and The Doors. And probably Traffic too! They take the same instrumentation as the Jazz groups, though the Vanilla Fudge add a bass player (If you don’t consider The Vanilla Fudge to be influential, you may want to read up on your history of Deep Purple). Which is the same instrumentation for some of the earlier R&B blues groups in the 1950s.
Jimmy McGriff 1963 Ive Got A Woman
I think there is also something important in the organ being traditionally a Church instrument. The gospel connotations in so many song and album titles is quite apparent. And it is there is some of the approaches to the playing as well. I have to wonder if the whole idea of referring to a particular style of music as "soul" comes directly from the utilization of the organ in jazz and the small groups it is associated with.
Richard “groove” Holmes 1965 Misty
Organ groups are small and therefore economical. Often they are trios featuring organ-guitar-drums, though a sax has often been used instead of a guitar. Additional members can be easily added. And I don’t think we should underestimate the fact that organ groups can be loud. The organ will use an amplifier as would a guitar, and hence the drummer can hit harder. In a loud smokey club in 1961, the sound of an organ trio or quartet can fill up the room.
Johnny “Hammond” Smith-- Cleopatra and The African Knight 1963
The organ groups to me are the quintesencial group of what folks called “the chitlin’ circuit”. This was the circuit of working class Black clubs where many jazz, blues, and R&B musicians have done their gigs. The food at these clubs often fit what we might call “soul food” and hence the name “chitlin’ circuit”. Referring to a venue as a “chicken shack” reflects this same idea: Working class Black club serving soul food.
Brother Jack McDuff Live 1963 Jive Samba
The circuit is gone. You cannot book a tour through the NorthEast playing these sorts of places anymore. The network is gone. But the venues still sometimes exist. In the megalopolis of DC to Boston, I know there are working class Back clubs featuring funky soul jazz and they often book organ groups. I’ve played them in Jersey City and Newark and Trenton. I have friends who play them in places like Trenton and Philly and even DC as well. I THINK they still exist in Baltimore. I know they still exist in the formally industrial cities of New York State. I know they still exist in and around Chicago. I suspect that they exist and persist in the industrial areas of Michigan and elsewhere in Illinois. I also suspect that the last 10 or so years have taken a serious toll on them. The 21st century has not been kind to the working unknown Jazz musician.
Shirley Scott (w Stanley Turrentine) Five Spot After Dark 1964(?)
Doctor Lonnie Smith w/Lou Donaldson 1968 -- Midnight Creeper
The two best Tenor Sax players I had the opportunity to play with and even gig a little bit with when I was young and in college both had regular gigs with major organ players at the start of their professional careers: Eric Alexander played with Charles Earland while a man named Tony Malaby—now more known in the modern world of avant guard jazz—joined up with Joey DeFrancesco. I happen to also know several guitar players obsessed with Grant Green who saught out organ players to play with. And I had a roommate for several years who was an organ player himself and damn good at it. He was so good at it, I didn’t bother to work on my organ chops and dedicated myself to understand how to play Cuban/Puerto Rican music instead. He spent a large amount of time trying to play like Jimmy Smith, I spent a near equal amount of time trying to play like Eddie Palmerie and Michelle Camilo. We both loved the same Bop and Hard Bop pianists.
Charles Earland 1997 Dolphin Dance
Dr Lonnie Smith and Joey DeFranesco 2006 --Someday my Prince Will Come
Larry Goldings 2013 Putting On The Ritz
And we and all of our friends loved Larry Young.
IN 1991, Blue Note records released a box set of all of the recordings Larry Young did for Blue Note. My dad got the box set for me for Christmas 1991. Some of the biographical information I say here in this diary is from the liner notes to that box set. I should update the Wikipedia entry for Larry Young myself. His son established a website for him, but it is almost as bad as the website for Art Blakey. It doesn’t seem to have been updated in 8 or 9 years. It has many links that are dead. Some of the biographical information is plagiarized from those very liner notes in the box set. (The Blakey website hasn’t been updated in a longer period of time and Blakey is far more the icon, had a much longer career and had more far reaching influence thus making a weak website even more of a disappointment)
Newark NJ. Birthplace to Wayne Shorter and Sarah Vaughn. And Larry Young. I've done a fair amount of academic research on Newark NJ, but mostly that work has been focused on the Latino population of Newark. I've been told, but I have not confirmed, the following:
Newark was a popular city with an active night life in the 1950s. The mob ran the town at this point too. The mob maintained many clubs and this created a substantial entertainment economy. A moralizing Mayor campaigned on cleaning up Newark and he won the election. An effort was made to shut down the mob run clubs and the nightlife and this effort was largely successful. The nightlife in Newark has never been as active or as profitable as it was back then.
But when it was active in the 1950s, Larry Young's father opened a club and put a Hammond Organ in the club and Larry started playing it all the time. And before he turned 20, he had a recording contract with Prestige records. He made three records for them.
From “Testifying” 1960 -- Falling in Love With Love
From “Young Blues” 1960 -- Nica’s Dream
African Blues
From “Groove Street” 1962 -- Sweet Lorraine
But in 1964, he switches to Blue Note and records frequently with Grant Green, June 6, 1935 – January 31, 1979, and Elvin Jones, September 9, 1927 – May 18, 2004. They would make four albums together and Elvin would play on Unity.
1963 “Talkin’ About” -- Im an Old Cow Hand
1964 “Street of Dreams” which adds Bobby Hutcherson on Vibes – I Wish You Love
1964 “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” which adds the great Hank Mobley on Tenor Sax
I Wanna Hold Your Hand (as if I could not post it!)
Speak low
But the really amazing stuff happens under Larry’s name. First there is the 1964 recording of the Trio with Sam Rivers called “Into Somethin’”
Tyrone
Paris Eyes
All of this becomes available to the public in 1965 and Larry Young is getting quite a bit of positive attention. And then comes 1965’s classic, “Unity”. Grant is not on this recording, there is no guitar. Instead it features Larry and Elvin with Joe Henderson and Woody Shaw (Shaw also being from Newark).
If
Beyond All Limits
Monk’s Dream
I really don’t want to post the whole album, though I’m tempted.
Larry's final recording with Grant Green is more Soul Jazz approach for 1965’s “His Majesty King Funk”
Cantaloupe Woman
But Larry finishes the 60s quite differently, exploring free jazz on the Organ. The remaining Blue Note albums do not sell well and do not get much attention from music critics. It's said the critics were too involved with which saxophonist could scream the loudest. James Spaulding appears on one. George Benson another. Local Newark musicians fill out the bands. But Larry's career is somewhat stalled.
1966 “Of Love and Peace”
Seven steps to heaven
Falaq
1967’s “Contrasts”
Means happiness
1968’s “Heaven on Earth”
Heaven on Earth
The Hereafter
He made his last record for Blue Note in 1969. And while I’m writing this, I can’t help but wondering how much Larry might have interacted with Sun Ra during the 60s. Sun was in NYC that decade.
1969’s “The Mothership”
The Mothership
I have no proof and direct reason to consider a connection to George Clinton, but I can’t help but believe that George was every bit aware of Larry Young…and Sun Ra.
Love drops
1969 brings something else. I’ll dwell more on this bit when I do my next Miles Davis diary, but 1969 sees Larry recording with John McLaughlin and his work with Tony Williams begins. I need to do a bit more research, but I would attest that the very first acknowledge Fusion group was Tony Williams’s Lifetime with Larry and John. I THINK this comes before Larry’s work on Bitches Brew with Miles. IM not going to link to Bitches Brew and it will be the focus of my next Miles diary. But here is a taste of where they go…including Jack Bruce
Larry also plays on the 1972 recording made by McLaughlin and Carlos Santana, "Love. Devotion and Surrender". Personally, I am a very big fan of both McLaughlin and Santana. In fact I play with an act that does a "Santana Tribute" show around northern NJ and if Carlos were to call me tomorrow, I could walk into the gig and know all the arrangements....point being, this record sucks. lol.
But with Williams and McLaughlin and Santana, Larry performs for larger audiences. Larry also in known for doing a long jam with Jimi Hendrix which was eventually released on the 1980 album, "Nine to the Universe". It is not nearly as good as you hope it is.
In 1973 he releases "Lawrence of Newark" which reviewers say owes more to the influence of McLuaghlin and Pharoah Sanders than to the music Larry had been most successful with.
Sunshine Fly Away
It's said Larry had gotten very frustrated with the music industry. He saw the success of far inferior musicians and couldn't quite understand why he wasn't as successful. In 1975 and 1976 he makes two very commercial recordings, for which he now has a "band" called Larry Young's Fuel.
1975's "Fuel for the fire"
Fuel for the Fire
1976's "Spaceballs"
Spaceballs
Sticky wicket
NO ONE bought these records.
His last recording was 1977's "The Magician". I cant find on you tube. I have never heard it. It is not in print. I ran across jazz forums with people asking about this record and no one seems to have it. Sadly, it probably is not that good either.
1978 began with Larry in a positive mood. He had found a new enthusiasm for music and was developing a new band. On March 28, 1978 his new wife gave birth, he signed a new and lucrative recording contract with Warner Brothers, and he was due to open at a NYC club with his new band. But a few days earlier he checked into the hospital complaining about sever stomach pains. While in the hospital he contracted pneumonia which was untreated. He died on March 30th, 1978.
One more thing, at some point...I assume in the later 60s...Larry converted to Islam and would sometimes go by Khalid Yasin. However his music career seems to have always been under the name "Larry Young".
He is missed.
Thanks for listening everyone! Please support your local Jazz musicians and all local live music. See ya next week!