There’s something almost uniquely special about two tenor summit meetings. Guitar duos come close, but after that, who REALLY wants to hear a pair of trombones, cluttery pianos, or heaven forbid, basses forming a two man front line? Nope, it’s the tenors, anyone, and this one by two of the greats, Johnny Griffin and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, is ambrosia.Griff and Jaws put out a number of albums out together, and this recording of 1962 concerts at the Penthouse in Seattle, Washington has mostly tunes from those sessions, but of course with the added energy of a concert performance. Davis has a classic big, foggy and gruff R&B sound, honed with his days with Count Basie, and Griffin’s searing and rapid fire six string shooter of a gun made him a favorite on hard bop classics by Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey and Wes Montgomery.
The mixing of sweet and sour sauces make for delicious music here, propelled by the air tight rhythm team of Horace Parlan/p, Buddy Catlett/b and the snappy drummer Art Taylor, who is crisper than a box of Pringles. Bebop is spoken here on the 92 Octane’d “Ow!” and kinetic “Second Balcony Jump” with an avalanche of energy cascading down the cliffs on “Blues Up and Down.” The two take turns, usually with Jaws in the lead, passing the baton to Griffin like a 1600 meter relay race, with the two going neck and neck in unison on the foot tapping “Tickle Toe” while Griffin goes bel canto on his aria “Sophisticated Lady” and the two ping pong back and forth on the mercurial “Blue Lou” like it was second nature.
The thing that makes this album so precious is that these guys had swing in their dna, unlike today’s musicians that have had the Philistinian influence of rock dilute their syncopated pulse. The sparks fly with ease in a way that is impossible to reproduce unless you lived it.
I saw Davis back in the 80s in a two tenor battle with Joe Farrell, and the room was filled with a London Fog of sound. No one is able to do that nowadays, so you might as well just enjoy recordings like these as the best way to musically time travel.