January 6–13, 2000

music

Savoy Shuffle

The word "legendary" is overused, misspent on things older than yesterday. If you’re looking for real legends, dig the Savoy record label’s reissue rollout — a collection of double- and triple-CD sets from the likes of Johnny Otis,Milt Jackson, The Adderley Brothers and more.

Savoy’s first owner, New Jersey’s own Herman Lubinsky, was a cigar-chomping entrepreneur who operated his own Newark radio station (WNJ), had a radio parts shop so you could hear his station and sold old and new records at another store. Lubinsky’s taste in music was "racerecords," platters from within the black community considered (pardon the pun) black market commodities. Commodify is just what he did when he started Savoy in 1942 during a musicians union strike. He wasn’t in it for the music. He hired top-notch producers and signed players to cheap,air-tight contracts.

Mean as he may have been, Lubinsky and Orrin Keepnews in his wake released the chewiest bop, post-bop, jump-blues, boogie, gospel and raunchy R&B of the ’40s and ’50s, from artists like Dizzy Gillespie in his bop prime or Stan Getz and Art Pepper before they were godfathers of WestCoast Cool. The diverse three-CD The Savoy Story: Volume One slowly percolates with swingers from Charlie Parker, bellowing blues from Joe Turner and Herbie Field’s mix of boogie piano striding, brass and dirty guitarriffs. This blend is what made Savoy great.

There was some straight-up stuff, too. Pepper’s Discovery Sessions takes the alto great into the lyrical sounds of symmetrical smooth jazz. Fats Navarro on Goin’ To Minton’s plays fractured bop like a motherfucker with co-trumpeter Kenny Dorham and alto saxophonistSonny Stitt, the most underrated reedman ever. Trumpeter Wilbur Harden’s The Complete Savoy Sessions is a master thesis as he, trombonist Curtis Fuller and saxophonist John Coltrane make humming magnanimous sounds. Very cozy stuff.

The blending of blues, boogie and bop is best represented on Johnny Otis’ three-CD Rhythm & Blues Caravan. Greek-American drummer Otis was a raucous white guy with an ear for vanguard African-American artists and whose true talents were closer to Lubinsky’s. He gathered thelikes of Jimmy Rushing, the Robins and Little Esther into his Revue between 1945 and 1951. Otis & Co. moved from slurred, Ellingtonian big band noir to the stinky-fingered, badass R&B of "Midnight in the Barrelhouse."

If you’re curious about how rock ’n’ roll got its balls or how soulful jazz came into its own, the Savoy label is the best place to start. And finish.

—a.d. amorosi