April 2002

From the Inside Out
Archive

2 0 0 2 Crazy Global Beat Blues Around the Clock Four Corners, One World Welcome to Soulsville With a Twist, and Rocks Then There Were Three New & Modern Sounds Bob Perkins Classic Sound Tracks CTI Records Dancing through the... Blue Note Blues Back to the Future 2 0 0 1 The Silky Soul Singer Songs for the Season ...The Modern World Louisiana Gumbo Bill Laswell Experiments Summer Scoops Spaghetti For Yo' Soul The DeFrancescos Gary Burton Joel Dorn Jack Costanzo Sammy Davis Jr. Miles Davis 2000 Rewind Jimmy Smith 2 0 0 0 Floating World/Talking Drum Requiem For A Heavyweight The Majesty of Ra Summer Photographs Arturo Sandoval Koko Taylor Jimmy McGriff Ubiquity Records Loving the Bomb AfriCaribbean Jazz Old Friends And New Discovering Cuba Grammy 2000 Never Can Say Goodbye 1 9 9 9 Livin La Musica Buena Jazz and Electronica California Dreamin' Continual Pulsation Five Decades of Prestige Summertime Blues Musical Adventures International Jazz Day Love Learns to Dance Quincy Jones

By Chris M. Slawecki

I know that it’s dating myself, but CTI Records was a large part of my introduction to jazz. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, records on the CTI label (and its sister label, Kudu) were always in the bins in Philadelphia record shops. In retrospect, I had no idea at the time how lucky I was to have found them, or maybe that that they found me.

“CTI” stood for “Creed Taylor, Inc.” after founder and owner Creed Taylor. Taylor helped to found the famous impulse! jazz label, and when MGM acquired Verve he was hired as General Manager and staff producer. As producer of the worldwide hit “The Girl from Ipanema” from the timeless Getz / Gilberto album (1963), Taylor played a large part in the mid-1960s bossa nova craze in jazz and popular music. At the end of the decade, he moved onto A&M where his productions included Wes Montgomery’s final sessions.

Then Taylor set up his eponymous imprint. Among his first recruits was producer/arranger Don Sebesky, a stalwart from Taylor’s Verve and A&M days. The two shared a gift for creating lush, soft arrangements that served to make jazz more palatable to a pop audience. CTI jazz records simply seemed more sweet or, pardon the expression, more “smooth,” than a lot of other jazz records. Throughout its operations, CTI recordings proved as instantly recognizable to the discriminating ear as were Joel Dorn’s productions for Atlantic Records during this same time period, perhaps somewhat less earthy and gutbucket funky but just as well-played and swinging.

The CTI stable would slowly but surely include some of the greatest jazz players of the label’s time, including Chet Baker, Paul Desmond, Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, Milt Jackson and bassist Ron Carter, whose deft touch and refined rhythmic and melodic senses graced a considerable portion of CTI’s output. CTI sets by Hubbard (Red Clay), Jackson (Sunflower and Goodbye with Hubert Laws) and Grover Washington Jr. (Inner City Blues) in particular stand among the best work of their considerable careers. Keyboardist Bob James, known to most people as duet partner to Earl Klugh and as composer to the theme of the hit ‘70s sitcom “Taxi,” often employed serious jazz chops in his work for CTI. CTI also gave artists opportunity to explore music with a freedom that larger, industrial-sized labels might not have granted, such as The Rite of Spring, Hubert Laws’ treatment of works by Stravinsky, Debussy, Bach and Faure’, and Yusef Lateef’s funk workout Autophysiopsychic, arranged by David Matthews, former chart-master for James “The Godfather of Soul” Brown, with Art Farmer as featured soloist.

Various Artists: CTI: The Master Collection (Epic / Legacy)

Sony Legacy recently launched a reissue series that makes classic CTI titles available once more, each remastered and many featuring unissued alternate studio takes or live performance tracks. In tandem with the February release of the first batch of titles, they also unveiled CTI: The Master Collection, a new two-CD label overview compiled by BBC radio jazz specialist Peter Young. For folks who remember the original issues, The Master Collection is like looking through a photographic scrapbook, as each individual photo conjures up sounds and visions of interrelated musical memories. For listeners unfamiliar with CTI’s legacy, it’s simply a great place to start.

The set begins with the Latin orchestral version of “Also Sprach Zarathustra” which gave Brazilian keyboardist and arranger Eumir Deodato one of 1972’s most improbable hit singles; the second disc includes his Latin orchestral version of Steely Dan’s “Do It Again” from his performance album Live at the Felt Forum. Similarly, the first disc features the title track from Milt Jackson’s Sunflower album, ten minutes of pure post-bop melodic joy with Hancock, Carter, drummer Billy Cobham and CTI’s trademark lush, tart strings; on the second, “Bags” skips and dashes like a schoolboy on the recess playground through “People Make the World Go Round” from this same album.

She Was Good To Me, Chet Baker’s 1974 comeback after years of inactivity, was a CTI production represented here by “Funk in Deep Freeze,” with the stellar ensemble of Carter, Desmond, James, Laws and Jack DeJohnette creating from this Hank Mobley tune an exquisite setting for Baker’s cool yet hot trumpet. George Benson’s CTI output is represented by his exciting Spanish version of “California Dreamin’” from his Spanish-themed album White Rabbit, and his swinging Latin-meets-Wes crossover “My Latin Brother” from his R&B-themed set Bad Benson. Couched in the trademark sweet and lush CTI arrangements, Paul Desmond’s astringent and disciplined alto creates an almost “sweet and sour” taste to his version of Jobim's classic bouncy Brazilian ballad "Wave" and to “Take Ten,” his homage to the famous original “Take Five.”

In the regular company of Deodato, Carter, Cobham, guitarist Eric Gale and others, saxophonist Stanley Turrentine presents one of the highlights of this Collection with his arduous and soulful workout of “Gibraltar,” a rock-solid uptempo bop composition by Freddie Hubbard. Turrentine, another artist who seems best known for his work with labels other than CTI, also saunters through the bad-ass title track to his album Don't Mess with Mister T, which was composed by another "Trouble Man," Marvin Gaye.

Throughout 2002, a total of fifteen individual CTI titles will be released in the first installments of the ongoing series. These include: Freddie Hubbard’s masterpiece for the label, Red Clay, with saxophonist Joe Henderson and the rhythm section of Hancock, Carter, and drummer Lenny Williams; The Main Attraction, a large ensemble Funk date (with more Matthews charts) by seminal guitarist Grant Green, known almost exclusively for his Blue Note catalog; Johnny Hammond’s Breakout, the Kudu label debut for this soulful B-3 “hammondator,” with Hank Crawford and Grover Washington Jr. sharing the sax solos and percussionist Airto, guitarist Gale, and Cobham providing the rhythm; and Esther Phillips’ What A Diff’rence A Day Makes, the vocalist’s best collaboration with guitarist Joe Beck and the source of her biggest hit single. The second batch of reissues is scheduled for June release.

Visit CTI Records on the web at www.ctirecords.com