Jo Jones - The Main Man (Pablo)

Basically a Basie band minus the Count, Jo Jones sole Pablo date (and one of his paltry few as a leader) mines a familiar swing-based songbook of blues, ballads and burners. His rep as the father of modern drumming more than warrants the Murders Row assembled in support. “Sweets” Edison AND Roy Eldridge, trumpets; Vic Dickenson on ‘bone and the pit-bull tenor of Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, able to chew expressively through a riff like few others; how about that for a take-no-prisoners horn section? Also on loan from Jones’ former employer, the redoubtable rhythm sense of one Freddie Green, plectrist par excellence. Tommy Flanagan occupies the piano seat, but his flowery, urbane style isn’t always the best fit for the down-home propensities of the ensemble. With a surname shared but no relation, Sam Jones is an elastic ballast on string bass. He settles comfortably into a wallflower walking role that requires only a modicum of his prowess, giving frequent nods to elder Walter Page.

But enough ink about the roll call. A jam session flavor of old chums, carousing and confabulating, pervades the six tunes. Basie’s “Goin’ to Chicago Blues” commences the party with a couple choruses of rhythm section sans horns sounding off in ode to Jones’ hometown. Stamped by the leader’s pile driver snare, the frontline’s entrance quickly narrows into a gurgling tailgate of Dickenson’s brass and onward to solos by Eldridge, Davis, Edison and Flanagan. Jones’ brushes sashay through “I Want to Be Happy” and sculpt spry time and sibilant volume on par with the harder sonorities achieved with his sticks. “Ad Lib” arrives as his only compositional contribution and it’s little more than riff-piece excuse for more rambunctious horns-and-drums horseplay. At odds with an overly academic title, “Metrical Portions” finds him toying blithely with tempo and mixing up syncopated lather on cymbals amidst sturdy bass fills by the other Jones. A lengthy Buck Clayton arrangement of the old tear-jerker “Dark Eyes” and the gray-mane warhorse “Old Man River” complete the package.

Norman Granz regularly earned black eyes in the critical press for bankrolling albums that favored friction and excess over congeniality and finesse. Running contrary to this conventional ‘wisdom’, this session (and fairly-speaking a slew of others) speaks to his substantive skills as a producer. While it’s a shame there aren’t more Jones-led dates for posterity this late-in-the-game document is also a fitting monument.