Gene Ammons - Up Tight! (Prestige / Fantasy)

In electronic digital correspondence last week, as I indulged myself with exegeses of my own particular blues, one of my closest friends said to me my problem is that I deny myself a good many of the joys in life. Which prompted to think about how, in July, I had thought to write about this album but had never gotten around to it. And God knows Jug is one of the greatest joys any of us who deign to call ourselves jazz listeners can ever hope to know. Jug, the great synthesizer, of the Pres and Hawk tenor traditions... That tone like black coffee with a twist of lemon... or really lonely at times like man exhaling across the mouth of an empty bottle, with its hidden depths and shadows... The tendency to be ever-so-lasciviously tardy on the beat... If hip is studied affectlessness, explain to me how Jug can be so cool and so galvanized at the same time. To me, it is a mystery the answers to which are partially locked away in an urban American culture that is no more – for both good and for ill. Jug, after all, was a musical hero to countless working class African-Americans, one of rare "serious" jazz artists of his time to tour American city after American city, bringing Saturday night -- and a little Sunday morning, too -- with him wherever he went and whenever he played.

Up Tight! is a Prestige "2-fer" containing all the music to be found on the original LPs Up Tight! (Prestige 7208) and Boss Soul (Prestige 7445). Recorded in 1961, with Ammons on furlough from prison (he was to spend the bulk of the 60's in jail on narcotics charges), these are, in their own way, very conceptual records built from the record label's ideas for Jug's post-Weinstock blowing sessions. Both sessions here were produced by Esmond Edwards (one of the first African-American to achieve that position in the industry) and they build upon the great popular success of the earlier Prestige albums Boss Tenor and Jug. This is Ammons' tenor plus rhythm accompaniment, relying on a pianist with a light but firm, modern touch, plus a Latin percussionist (soon-to-be-Fania superstar, congalero Ray Barretto) for extra push and cushion, working through a program of ballads, blues and up-tempo pop tunes.

But these records are not predictable as all that. They bring to life the ample meaning the word "swing" has: as a noun, an adverb, an adjective, and, of course, a verb both transitive and intransitive. The feeling of joy, of being freed (even if only temporarily) from a whole host of worries, is most palpable on the October 17 session with Walter Bishop Jr., culminating in renditions of Ellington's "I'm Beginning To See The Light" and Young's "Lester Leaps In" that groove so hard they literally make it difficult to sit still. Groove can be a mysterious thing, because it is such a collective responsibility, but it is here in abundance, even on the more low-key Patti Bown session. Couple this with the effortless soulfulness of the playing, and you have the chimera that less-skilled hard bop players were and still are after. I don't believe it make me a simpleton to praise this music by calling it "powerfully upbeat"; even the ballads and slow blues are suffused with so much tenderness that Jug, unburdening himself with true magnanimity, transforms whatever melancholy is pent-up within them into something nearly beyond fulfilling.

There's a great double-time passage at the heart of track 2 here -- "Carbow" -- that is so apposite to what I want to convey that all I can do is prevail upon you to listen to it several times in a row and then hope you hear it the way I do. Let's say I'm buying this round, and, hey, Lise -- here's to you.