Listening to Prestige: Chronicling Its Classic Jazz Recordings, 1949–1972

Listening To Prestige
Tad Richards
278 Pages
ISBN: # 9798855804959
Excelsior Editions/State University of New York
2026

Hubris and romanticism are the clashing hallmarks of history and jazz, like all human endeavors, is no exception. A sinuous, serpentine, and often torturous road through the American landscape: Slavery, poverty, migration, Jim Crow, drugs, prejudiced, exploitive record execs and police departments, any history of the music could, in less skilled hands, get bogged down easily into yet another yawning historical harangue or stuffy canard.

Not so Listening to Prestige: Chronicling Its Classic Jazz Recordings, 1949-1972. Lucid, candid, and, above all else, conversational, author, poet, blogger, and jazz enthusiast Tad Richards gives us the jazz guide suitable for jazz novices and freaks everywhere. Full of facts, observations, and personal asides, it is a most enjoyable and knowledgeable read about what is, by any accounts, a rather heady subject.

Emanating from a blog that Richards began in 2014 while actually listening to the music of Prestige and not putting it under the cultural microscope, Listening to Prestige is just that: A pure listen to the music that made the label so great it once stood alongside and rivaled  Blue Note as the indy label of choice for the post-war giants who seemed to be arriving in New York City and its immediate environs circa 1949 on an almost daily basis. Think Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Gene Ammons. Think Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, John Lewis, Roy Haynes. Think of any jazz name that comes to mind and rolls off the tongue.

But first, think Bob Weinstock, the guy who, at the age of eighteen and with, believe it or not, his father's blessing (how many among us at that tender age could avow to that?) opened a record shop in Times Square and started hanging with, well, Kenny Clarke, Lee Konitz, Lennie Tristano. Now think of a besotted Richards, also eighteen but twenty-two years later, digging on John Coltrane with the Red Garland Trio (Prestige, 1958) and it is immediately apparent why Listening to Prestige is a kick for all ages.

Richards names the names and the places where Weinstock let the music happen, and through the maze of technology, you can hear it too. Whether a personal collection, his blog (https://opusforty.blogspot.com/), or any of the streaming services that do not pay artists a living wage (isn't it odd how times never change?) Listening to Prestige comes to life as very few books do. Just cue up Battle of the Saxophones (Prestige, 1951), Bags' Groove (Prestige, 1957), Soul Burnin' (Prestige, 1964) or any other classic that strikes your fancy and listen to the pages.