Revinylization #57: Trane meets the Motor City, 2 Reissues from OJC and Craft Recordings

Detroit became a destination for migrating African Americans early, starting with the Underground Railroad; the city’s proximity to Canada was convenient for those seeking to escape Southern slavery. The mass human movement accelerated with the Great Migration, which started about 1910, when millions of African Americans left the Jim Crow South for northern cities. The same human movement that brought the blues to Chicago and jazz to New York City took both to Detroit.

In all those cities, the 1920s was a time of ballrooms and big music halls. In Detroit, “society bands” black and white played through-composed, jazz-inflected music, according to a narrative put together by Cliff Coleman and Jim Ruffner for the local jazz museum (footnote 1). The proliferation of orchestra chairs meant that skilled musicians familiar with a range of musical styles could find work, especially if they read music. It also meant that Detroit was ready when, in 1927, Don Redman, who had been the chief arranger for Fletcher Henderson’s band, moved to the city to lead William McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, the resident Black jazz orchestra at Detroit’s Graystone Ballroom. The Pickers soon became an important touring band, with a national reputation. Big-name orchestras like Duke Ellington’s and Fletcher Henderson’s started to visit the city; on Monday nights, the national bands would “battle” local bands, according to Coleman and Ruffner’s account.

As the ’20s yielded to the ’30s and beyond, there was a shift across the country away from big bands and toward smaller groups, for obvious economic reasons. In Detroit, this shift was aggravated by other factors, including riots and the decimation of Paradise Valley by so-called urban renewal (a story familiar from other cities including, notably, Memphis). The ballrooms shut down, and entertainment moved into smaller venues throughout the city.

In the 1940s, musical reports arrived (via records and radio broadcast) of a new kind of jazz invented at Minton’s in Harlem by Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, and others. Among the Detroiters the new music reached was Milt Jackson, a student at de facto segregated Miller High School, who would soon be hired by Dizzy to play vibes in his sextet. According to Mark Stryker, author of Jazz from Detroit, Detroit was among the first cities where bebop caught on, and Detroit’s jazz players became known as skilled beboppers.

Miller was one of several Black high schools with important music programs. Northwestern and Cass Technical joined Miller in offering, as Coleman and Ruffner put it, “more progressive music curriculums.” Here’s a partial list of the musicians who emerged from Detroit in those years: Pepper Adams, Geri Allen, Roy Brooks, Donald Byrd, Betty Carter, Ron Carter, Paul Chambers, Alice Coltrane, Curtis Fuller, Roland Hanna, Barry Harris, Joe Henderson, brothers Hank, Thad, and Elvin Jones, Yusef Lateef, Charles McPherson, Tommy Flanagan, and Kenny Burrell.

Milt wasn’t the only Miller High graduate to play with Dizzy. On March 1, 1951, guitarist Kenny Burrell joined Dizzy’s sextet for a recording session; Milt was still on vibes. Also at that session was a young saxophone player named John Coltrane, who played tenor and alto at the session.

In 1955, Burrell toured briefly with Oscar Peterson, graduated from Wayne State, and moved to New York, accompanied by Flanagan, a pianist.

Both, apparently, were ready. Within a year, Flanagan had appeared on several recordings including Sonny Rollins’s great Saxophone Colossus. In May 1959, he played with Trane on Giant Steps. Within months of his arrival, Burrell had recorded an album as leader for Blue Note, Introducing Kenny Burrell (footnote 2), at Rudy Van Gelder Studio in Hackensack. Also at that session were Flanagan and Paul Chambers, another Detroiter, a few years younger than Burrell. Kenny Clarke was on drums, Candido Camero was on congas.

A few months later, Burrell was working with Coltrane and Flanagan again, in a session that would yield The Cats, with Idrees Sulieman on trumpet. 1958 produced Kenny Burrell and John Coltrane, again with Flanagan and Chambers, who was fast becoming Trane’s preferred bassist. Jimmy Cobb, Coltrane’s favored drummer, kept time.

In recent months, The Cats and Kenny Burrell and John Coltrane have been reissued by OJC and Craft Recordings on 180gm LP. Both check all the premium vinyl reissue boxes: all-analog from “original tapes,” mastered for vinyl at Cohearant Audio (although KB and JC is credited to Matthew Lutthans and not, as is usual, to Kevin Gray), pressed at RTI, and packaged in “tip-on” jackets, which means the cover art was printed to paper, then glued to a corrugated core, instead of printing directly to cardboard. “Tip-on” is considered the classiest way of doing things, giving the best result. There’s an OJC obi strip, for collectors who value such things.

Over years of listening, I’ve come to admire Tommy Flanagan’s playing. He isn’t flashy, but he plays with touch and blues feeling. He’s a skilled accompanist and an inventive soloist.

Much the same can be said for Burrell. Those characteristics are on display on both these albums but especially on Kenny Burrell and John Coltrane. Both are easily worth the asking price, but I found KB and JC more introspective—more musically interesting, especially in the dynamic between Burrell’s cool, flowing guitar and Coltrane’s restless, questing spirit. In a way, Burrell wins that contest: Trane’s performance is uncommonly restrained; you can almost hear him copying Burrell’s sound at the transitions between solos. To me The Cats seems more extroverted and less expressive, perhaps as a result of the added trumpet. The sonics, too, are a little more aggressive.

Both albums are worth having, but if you must choose one, I’d choose Kenny Burrell and John Coltrane first.

Footnote 1: See detroitsound.org/artifact/cliff-coleman-jim-ruffner.

Footnote 2: Introducing was reissued in 2019 by Blue Note in its Tone Poet series. Chambers’s Bass on Top, from 1957, was also reissued in that series, in 2020. Both are still available.

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