Younger Than Yesterday

Larry Young was a jazz organist who worked relentlessly between 1960 and 1978, as a front man but most especially as a sideman. Larry worked for virtually everyone, from Miles Davis to Jimi Hendrix, and he took the Hammond organ into new realms, but he is mostly forgotten today. His story outlines the history of the organ in jazz, somewhat forgotten today. Once the workhorse of the live band, after the fusion wars, the organ was largely forgotten in favor of a drier and more 'traditional' sound by both the musicians and the aging audience.

The organ was useful as a replacement for an orchestra, and with the advent of electricity became smaller and more affordable. Radio used it constantly, and it was still supplying background music for television soap operas at least into the 1970s. Most commonly it could be found in churches, both white and black, and it became a staple of gospel music. From there, it was just a matter of time before it slipped into secular music.

Jazz itself in the post-war period wasn't simply a shift into bop, cool, and post-bop. There was a segregation in the jazz audience between those in bigger cites and smaller cities, and between white and black audiences. It was the Afro-American clubs where rhythm & blues and soul jazz was most popular, a precursor to soul music and later funk. They were the ones who accepted electric instruments like the organ and the amplified guitar, while the white college crowd preferred the straight-ahead sounds of Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck, artists who resisted electricity for decades.

I had the supreme pleasure of interviewing Lou Donaldson for a documentary in 2012 and he was by far the most fun interview I ever did in my three decade career as a video producer. Lou knew everybody and had done everything, within reason, but he was a truly humble guy who went out of his way to make me and my tiny crew feel at home both at the club where he sat in for a few songs (so I could get some footage of him playing, and where he insisted on paying our bill) and at his home for many hours the next day. As is typical of these events, his comments after the camera was turned off were even more interesting than when the tape was rolling.

Specifically, Lou talked extensively about the business of being a jazz musician in the 1950s and 1960s. He claimed that he wasn't the best sax player, just the best who wasn't a junkie, a gross underestimation of his talents. He played in 'ghetto clubs', so he and other players at the time developed the soul jazz genre, where he could sneak a little bebop into a dance tune, but it still had to be dance-able. And he welcomed the Hammond, since it could also replace the bass player, making the money split better for each player. Despite his 'no fusion, no confusion' catch phrase, he was fusing the blues and even early funk into his music, as can be seen in the clip below, with great assistance by Dr. Lonnie Smith.

Hammond organists, starting with Jimmy Smith and continuing with Brother Jack McDuff, Richard 'Groove' Holmes, Jimmy McGriff and many others, dominated the soul jazz genre, along with sax players like Lou Donaldson as well as electric guitarists like Kenny Burrell and Grant Green. These guys wanted to sell a lot of records records and play a lot of clubs, and some, like Lou Donaldson, really wanted to make the audiences happy, even singing the blues like Wynonie Harris. This was a groove-oriented jazz, less interested in being esoteric, more concerned with being popular.

One of the many players who circulated through Lou Donaldson's band was Larry Young, straight from playing in R & B outfits in Northern New Jersey. Larry was born in 1940, his father an organist. The organ had been around since the turn of the century and had been used extensively, such as in church services, funeral homes, and accompanying silent movies. Not the most promising instrument for the post-bop world, yet in the hands of someone with a talent like Larry Young, it became something else entirely. He took the organ straight into the rock world and into the hottest fusion music ever created, yet he gets very little credit today.

Larry's first recording date was in 1960, first accompanying Jimmy Forrest, whose 'Night Train' was one of the foundational songs in soul jazz and later covered by James Brown, himself a pretty good Hammond player, as evidenced on the CD 'Soul Pride; the Instruments 1960-1969', where you can literally hear soul jazz morph into funk. He was soon leading his own small groups on a couple of albums in 1960 and 1962 before hooking up with Blue Note Records starting with 'Into Something' in 1964. The earliest stuff was very much in the soul jazz groove, such as 'African Blues.

One of the great abilities of the organ - with the right player - was to 'comp' like no other instrument. 'Comping' is short for accompanying, where a rhythm player could keep the song moving under another soloist, shifting chord patterns or int he case of a bass player doing a walking bass line. Larry became a very in demand session player during the early 1960s, used on many sessions by Grant Green and Kenny Burrell, among many others because of his superior accompanying skills. It also helped that he was based out of the same area as Rudy Van Gelder.

In the history of audio recording, Rudy Van Gelder must hold the record for most sessions as engineer ever, more remarkable as he held a full-time job as an optometrist for the first twelve or so years. From the late 1940s through 2015, he recorded literally tens of thousands of jazz sessions, first in his parent's living room, then after his custom studio was built in 1959, in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Rudy is famous for his clean and unobtrusive sound, helped by a stunning array of highly talented musicians who arrived rehearsed and ready to play. In an age when we are used to a band taking three years to release an album, nearly everything done by Van Gelder was recorded in a single day, with amazing results.

It also helped that the volume level of most jazz groups were low, but that doesn't detract from Van Gelder's skill set, which kept increasing over the decades. He was particularly adept at recording the Hammond organ, a notoriously difficult instrument to capture because of the many tones and overtones covering a dizzying spectrum of frequencies. It was easy for visiting musicians to travel over from Manhattan, and Rudy usually had at least one session a day as well as cutting his own lacquers to ensure the sound was transferred right. And Van Gelder worked nearly exclusively with Blue Note, the major soul jazz label.

The Blue Note years were Larry's high point as a leader, with the self-penned standard 'Tyrone' on 'Into Something' (hell, even I covered that song) and the album 'Unity' probably his best know work. Larry was beginning to show a profound influence of John Coltrane in his playing, a common-enough occurrence in the mid-60s, except that he was one of the only organ players in that mode. He also began to be influenced, abet in a subtle way, by the unique stylings of Sun Ra, a man who orbited the jazz world in his own peculiar constellation. Sun Ra had the ability to play what he called 'space chords', and Larry started using them in his comping.

No too many players managed to be influenced by John Coltrane and Sun Ra at the same time, but Larry Young did. At the same time, he started heading into jazz-rock fusion, showing up on Miles Davis' seminal 'Bitch's Brew' double album as well as joining the nastiest of the early fusion bands, the Tony Williams Lifetime. The Lifetime started out as a traditional jazz trio of guitar, organ and drums, but playing at the volume and intensity of Cream or Jimi Hendrix. Jack Bruce, the bass player of Cream, even joined the band in 1970 for a brief period. And somewhere in all this work, Larry found time to record with Jimi Hendrix, a few tracks which were released years after the fact. The following track is a somewhat low-fi but extremely rare live recording of the trio.

Tony William's Lifetime seemed a doom group for the beginning; their first album was recorded carelessly by a jazz engineer (not Rudy Van Gelder) who didn't care for the volume, and it sounds harsh and extra distorted. McLaughlin was using an acoustic guitar with a pickup in the hole, about the worst choice of instrument for music at that roaring intensity. The jazz community rejected it outright, along with a couple of follow ups also featuring Young, but McLaughlin hit financial paydirt with his Mahavishnu Orchestra. Before that, he did record one electric album with Larry on organ as well as Buddy Miles on drums.

Totally committed to fusion, converted to Islam and wearing a sheik's garb on stage, Larry wanted to explore the free jazz / free rock hybrid even more, but the entire music world was retreating to safer pastures. Rock was into more structured progressive and safer boogie, while jazz embraced Lou Donaldson's 'no fusion, no confusion' motto. There was a short lived band called Love Cry Want, utilizing primitive synths on both drums and guitars, that gigged around in 1972, producing what Lester Bangs called 'shronk' that was louder and scarier than anything else I ever heard, but it went nowhere.

When John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana did a joint project, a fusion version of John Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme', they used Larry on the organ, both on the album and tour. It would be his last real high profile gig. He tried creating a hybrid jazz/funk outfit called Larry Young's Fuel, but two albums sold horribly. His last appearance on a record was in 1977, a duet album with keyboard player Joe Chambers; Larry's commercial stature was so low that he wasn't even mentions on the cover. He died shortly after suddenly, and the golden age of the jazz organ was officially dead.

Larry was the only guy to play with Miles, Hendrix, McLaughlin, Santana, Kenny Burrell, Grant Green, and a veritable host of other jazz greats. There was a couple of unreleased sessions, including a very good one from 1964 in Paris. While really excellent, with some of the only actual research ever done on his life, it goes back to the safer 'straight-ahead' period, where jazz purists feel comfortable. His later free funk/rock/jazz period is mostly forgotten, but Larry consistently managed to sound like no one else on the planet.

There was an inkling of interest around 2012, when the short-lived group 'Spectrum Road' was formed to celebrate the Tony Williams Lifetime. John Medeski, the only organist who could possibly try and sound like Larry, filled the keyboard, but the inclusion of Jack Bruce, right near the end of his life, skewed the project more towards him and less towards the rest of the group. At least it was something, if too little too late. Admittedly, Larry Young's later material is not for the faint of heart, it is intense and adventurist. You can't help but feel that he was punished for his ever-searching nature instead of treated like the natural treasure that he really was. That's a pity.

Moved By the Times

Another in my series of British rock groups who never made it in America is the Move, again hugely influential yet largely unknown except to a select few. These were tough guys from Birmingham, the same industrial wasteland that would later spawn Black Sabbath, and there will be a connection. And like the Pretty Things and the Small Faces, the comparison that most immediately comes to mind is the Who, though this time through the live act, which included the Move's own version of auto-destruction. Musically, they were their own animal and pointed the way towards progressive rock while having a significant impact on the 1970s and beyond.

The Move were five local Birmingham all stars who got together to form a new band and move to London, trying for the big time. There were three key players; singer Carl Wayne, guitarist and songwriter Roy Wood, and drummer Bev Bevan. They signed to Tony Secunda's management, and Tony immediately went for a big image, dressing them as gangsters from the 1930s and having them destroy television sets, cars, and effigies of the British prime minister during their stage act. Fortunately, Roy Wood started writing songs that could compete with the heavy posing.

The band hit right at the being of psychedelia and Roy milked it for all it was worth, despite never doing drugs. He said that it was a bottle of whiskey that was the inspiration for songs like 'Night of Fear' and 'I Can Hear the Grass Grow'. The sound was full of vocal harmonies and a very heavy bottom, already a popular feature in bands like the Kinks and the Who. But now it was all huge bass and thumbing toms, and Roy created quite complex pop songs, three minute mini-symphonies.

They were a huge hit in Britain right away, due as much to the constant press for various scandals, such as a single with nude pictures of politicians that was taken to court in a libel suit. But the singles of 1967 were uniformly excellent, if not always the best productions. Sometimes the complicated layered sound had a muddy mix, but the material was relentlessly upbeat and so well crafted that the quality shone through. Like the Beatles and other bands of the era, there was a great effort on the part of Roy Wood to make every song sound different and a progression from the one before.

The Move was also a big hit on the Continent; they spent their first two years playing Europe at a dizzying rate. The BBC loved them as well, and the sessions that are available shows that they retained their Birmingham cover band repertoire, playing the Beach Boys Byrds, and other California bands very well. There was even a live extended play single in early 1968, mostly other people's songs, which was a little strange considering the quality of Roy Wood's material. 1968 was the year of their greatest success, with songs such as 'Fire Brigade', 'Blackberry Way', and 'Curly' dominating the British charts.

There was  a problem with the group, which was a case of too many guys trying to be the lead singer. Carl Wayne had to fight to get any singing time, as everyone but the drummer got a chance to vocalize on nearly every song. The revolving singers made the group seem like an old-fashioned show band more than an underground phenomenon, helping them have a very professional presentation but keeping them from seeming hip. Eventually, the extra guitarist and bass player quit over front time, and a more subdued bass player, Rick Price, joined.

1968 saw the band move more towards a more pop sound as well. 'Fire Brigade' is almost a straight ahead rocker, similar to 'Lady Madonna' and ;Jumping Jack Flash', a return to roots music. 'Blackberry Way' is one of the best Beatles-sounding songs ever produced by a contemporary British band. 'Curly' gave Carl Wayne a chance to sound more like Engelbert Humperdinck than a rocker, a problem that would rear its head in 1969.

That year saw the band try a tour of America, something that the Pretty Things and Small Faces both failed to do during the 1960s. It was funded by Jimi Hendrix, of all people, who had toured with the band (with Pink Floyd on the bill as well!) in late 1967. Jimi had even used a couple of the members of the group as backup singers on the 'Axis; Bold as Love' album. It was very underfunded, and the band had to travel by van from the east coast to California with very little time or very many gigs in between. They finished the tour, and there is an excellent recorded from the Fillmore gigs, but it didn't help them crack the market.

They tried their first coherent album in 1969, 'Shazam', a mixture of hard rock ('Hello Susie'), psychedelia, and progressive rock ('Cherry Blossom Clinic Revisited', a personal favorite). It's a curious album, with snippets of conversation with people on the street as well as long jamming sections, but I like it. Carl Wayne, wanting to become more of an all-around entertainer than the guy who wielded a real axe while smashing things up on stage, left soon after. He had a long career on the BBC on television and a radio host.

Needing a replacement to augment the three remaining members (Wood, Bevan and Price), they went to Jeff Lynne, who had played in another Birmingham band called the Idle Race. That band had sounded exactly like the Move and scored a couple of minor hits. Jeff was happy to make the move, mostly playing lead guitar and singing harmony in the beginning. He only contributed one song to the next album, 'Looking In', but he and Roy were very compatible and started cooing up some real schemes, such as the Electric Light Orchestra.

While still releasing a steady stream of excellent singles in 1970, the band made a shift from being a live touring band to being a studio entity exclusively. The recordings became even more complex, if that seemed possible, and Roy Wood started playing an astounding number of instruments such as oboe and cello on songs. 'Do Ya' and 'California Man', among others, kept them in the charts, but Wood and Lynne started to see the Move as outdated and wanted to do a fully functional version of a rock band with a string section, taking the late Beatles music even further while touring with it.

The first Electric Light Orchestra is a Move album in everything but name only and was a success, but Roy Wood opted out of any further involvement, a curious phenomenon. In fact, Roy Wood's post-Move career is bizarre by American standards; he went back to 50s rock & roll while where more makeup than Emmitt Kelly. Eventually, Roy became something of a hermit and could only occasionally be coaxed back out in public. His songwriting in the Move was among the best of the entire 1966 to 1972 era and deserves to be heard and remembered.

Jeff Lynne, along with Bev Bevan, took the Electric Light Orchestra to massive worldwide success, even starring in the 1980 movie 'Xanadu' with Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly. Jeff had many chart toppers all over the world and took ELO right into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame. Probably his greatest achievement was producing the last two Beatle songs, 'Free as a Bird' and 'Real Love', besides providing production duties for George Harrison, Paul McCartney, and Tom Petty.

Bev Bevan wound up touring with Black Sabbath in 1983, a last minute replacement for Bill Ward, who was having drug issues and didn't want the temptations of the road. This was the Ian Gillian version of the band, and the addition of Bevan set off a firestorm of criticism. Metal heads seemed to have forgotten that the Move had been from the same group of musicians that also spawned Sabbath as well as John Bonham of Led Zeppelin; all specialized in a bass-heavy sound that morphed into heavy metal. From the evidence of the radio broadcasts of that version of Sabbath, Bev had no trouble playing the drum parts.

The Move is somewhat forgotten, overshadowed by the titanic legacy of ELO. Bu that later band, sounding so Beatle-ish, could not have existed had it not been for the Move. And the legacy goes way beyond that; the Move, perhaps more than some of the more quoted groups such as Procul Harum or the Nice, paved the way for progressive rock with their tightly structured singles full of classical references, tempo changes, and multi-layered harmonies. Roy Wood created the template, and Jeff Lynne came along later to perfect the formula, turning it into pop gold. But the Move was there first, and deserve to be remembered as one of the great 1960s British bands.

The one American band that were deeply influenced by the Move were Cheap Trick, who over the years have covered a number of Roy Wood songs and even had him as a guest at concerts. That's nice and well deserved, but Roy Wood created a huge body of work in many different styles during his time in the Move and it was uniformly excellent. He is the bridge between psychedelia and progressive rock, but he never worked in a straight line. And he constantly surrounded himself with an excellent band, with his ideas spawning massive success in the 1970s and 1980s, even if he didn't want to participate.