Once upon a time, tenor saxes were big and booming, filling the room with sounds akin to a Baptist preacher on a Sunday morning. Here were a couple of tenor titans of the past
One of the smokiest sounding tenor saxists was Gene Ammons, who obviously drank deeply from the well of his boogie-ing piano father Albert. This two disc collection brings together albums where Ammons walked the tightrope between jazz and R&B. He recorded a couple of hot sessions with jazzers like Sonny Stitt/ts, Duke Jordan/p, Tommy Potter/b and J o Jens/dr on pieces like “Up and Down” goes toe to toe with Stitt on “Easy Glide” and “Gravy Walkin”, with Stitt hitting hard on the baritone on “the jamming “Jug”. On the R&B side, he backs Sally Early on pieces like “Fine and Foxy” and hits eight to the bar on “Ammons Boogie”, forming a hot front line with Stitt and trombone master JJ Johnson on “Beezy” and “Somewhere Along The Way”. This is music for the juke joints, the pool halls and your tapping toes.
Just a half a musical generation before Ammons was Georgie Auld, who made his names with the bands of Shaw and Goodman at first before jumping on the bop bandwagon with Billy Eckstine. You can here his tone in comparison to giants like Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins on a trio of tunes from 1944 which include a gorgeous “Porgy” and sizzling “Salt Peanuts”. Leading his own orchestra with the likes of Al Cohn/ts and Sonny Berman/tp, he croons through “I Can’t Get Started” with a band with Gillespie/tp, Billy Butterfield/tp, Trummy Young/tb, Chubby Jackson/b and a young Errol Garner/p produce “Sweetheart Of All My Dreams” and “In The Middle” with “Lover Man” being state of the art. He covers some Goodman material in 45 with “Airmail Special” and does an impressive read of Ellington’s “Just A-Sittin’ and A-Rockin” and a few years later goes modern with some Gerry Mulligan charts on “Darn That Dream”. He closes out the 40s and starts the 50s still sounding up to date, with boppers Frank Rosolino/tb and Lou Levy/p on ‘Autumn In New York” and “What’s New”. This guy blows smoke rings!