Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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Some 1970 big band soul jazz from the ubiquitous Quincy Jones:



I had the first pressing of this album, thanks to a tip from my high school pal, the late great Count. Being a fan of all things jazz-rock in the era of Chicago Transit Authority, BS&T, and Chase, this album puzzled me and still does. It's hard not to like the sound now, as an adult, but even back then I sensed something exploitative about the album that I didn't have the language to express. This is the music of Hugh Hefner and Playboy After Dark, marketed to youth at a time when hippie culture was being ravenously co-opted by establishment impresarios and entertainment moguls. The entire first side of the album on which Killer Joe appears is dedicated to Dead End and Walking In Space, "from the American Tribal Love-Rock Musical Hair" (speaking hip-sploitation).

Usually I despise the flute as a solo jazz instrument, but I make a provisional exception for certain muscular-sounding performances by people like Herbie Mann and Roland Kirk (and Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson, of course, although not a jazz musician). I forgive this performance because it was original and of the time. I also think the arrangement is marred by the dainty female chorus during the last half; they seem to festoon Quincy's wall of sound mostly as an audio version of Hef's mansion playmates --- mere decoration, pleasant or slightly creepy. Because of these details, both then and now I experience a mild embarrassment to admit that I enjoy this cut. And for that matter, I'd probably chat up Miss July 1970 if I ran into her at The Esquire this weekend (but she'd be lucky to snag me).

It may sound like I'm disparaging Jones a bit with these thoughts (which were pretty much unknown to me until I started typing), but no harm is intended. Quincy Jones is a monster in American musical history, and not only for his early associations with legends like Lionel Hampton, Ellington, Basie, Ray Charles, and a latter-career collaboration with Miles Davis (the trumpeter's last recording). He was behind the scenes literally everywhere as an arranger and producer, from an ill-fated 1950s effort to transform Louis Jordan into a rock star, to the top of the charts with Lesley Gore (It's My Party) and Michael Jackson (Thriller), a Sinatra collaboration, and a zillion movie soundtracks and TV show themes. His highly irritating, flute-featuring 1962 tune Soul Bossa Nova was even resurrected for the soundtrack of an Austin Powers movie and as the theme for the 1998 World Cup games. (I own it, regrettably.) Jones was responsible for any number of stinkers, but statistically that would be expected of someone involved in virtually every important aspect of postwar American jazz and pop music. The man knows how to arrange a chart exactly how it should sound, whether for good, or for... eev-ill.

Killer Joe, Quincy Jones (1970, from "Walking In Space," A&M Records)

Apropos of something: Killer Joe was composed by Benny Golson, whom we learned last week was influenced by our unlikely hero Earl Bostic.