Deep in the Stacks: Your Daily Jazz LP Podcast
Every day, Danny from Kissa Kissa -- the Japanese-style jazz vinyl bar in Crown Heights, Brooklyn -- pulls one album from the stacks and tells you who made it, why it matters, and what to listen for. Three minutes, one record you need to hear. Calendar-driven picks tied to recording dates and artist birthdays, plus deep cuts from the Kissa Kissa collection.
Deep in the Stacks: Your Daily Jazz LP Podcast
The Song Book — Booker Ervin (Prestige, 1964)
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
---
More from Sticky Note Podcasts:
The Why of Words (daily etymology) | Required Drinking (cocktail history) | Photography Knowledge (daily photo tips)
stickynotepodcasts.com
Booker Irvin taught himself tenor saxophone while stationed on a military base in Okinawa. Within a few years, he was playing alongside Charles Mingus, and his sound, raw, huge, soaked in Texas blues, was unlike anything else in New York. In 1964, he sat down with three of the most refined musicians in jazz and recorded an album of standards. The results were extraordinary. This is Deep in the Stacks, today's album, The Songbook, by Booker Irvin. Irvin was born in Denison, Texas in 1930 and grew up surrounded by gospel and blues. After enlisting in the Air Force, he picked up the saxophone on bass and never put it down. He studied at Berkeley, then moved to New York, where Mingus hired him in late 1958. That association defined his early reputation, a muscular, uncompromising voice in Mingus's most combustible ensembles. But Irvin was also a deeply melodic player, and his series of book albums for prestige let him prove it. The songbook is the second in that series, following the Freedom Book. Recorded at Van Gelder Studio on February 27, 1964, it's a set of six standards played by a quartet. Irvin on tenor, Tommy Flanagan on piano, Richard Davis on bass, and Alan Dawson on drums. It's the only recorded meeting between Irvin and Flanagan, and the pairing is inspired. Flanagan's elegance, his crystalline touch, his harmonic sophistication, provides the perfect counterweight to Irvin's big throaty tone. Davis and Dawson supply a rhythm section of extraordinary sensitivity. The repertoire ranges from Duke Ellington's Come Sunday to the Gershwin's Our Love Is Here to Stay to Jerome Kern's Yesterdays. Irvin takes each melody and inhabits it completely, stretching phrases until they bend but never break. He died in 1970 at age thirty nine, far too young, with far too few records under his name. Try The Lamp is Low First. Irvin states the melody with a tenderness that might surprise anyone who only knows his Mingus work. Then, listen for Flanagan's solo, which unfolds with quiet precision. That balance between power and restraint is the whole story of this album. For something with more heat, go to just friends. Irvin pushes harder here, and Dawson's drumming responds in kind. The two of them build a momentum that Flanagan and Davis ride beautifully. He's not just keeping time, he's in conversation with Irvin. And Dawson's brushwork on the ballads is some of the most tasteful drumming you'll hear on any prestige date. Six standards, four musicians, no tricks. Sometimes that's all you need. The Songbook by Booker Irvin. Proof that the hardest blowing tenor in jazz could also be its most tender. I'm Danny from Kissa Kissa in Brooklyn. Go put on a record. We'll see you tomorrow.