Originally released in 1956 on the Metro Jazz label, this was (and remains) trombonist and arranger Melba Liston’s (1926-1999) only recording as a leader. From 1943 she was associated with Gerald Wilson’s several big bands and with Dizzy Gillespie (1949-50). She also worked with Dexter Gordon, visited Europe with Quincy Jones’ orchestra (1959-61), and as a freelance arranger provided material for Milt Jackson and Johnny Griffin. She also performed in the bands of Charles Mingus and Clark Terry. It was Wilson who taught and encouraged the young Melba, and she later recalled that he “was the first person to start me doing any serious writing”.
This extremely welcome reissue includes four tracks originally appearing under Frank Rehak’s leadership. A virtuoso player in her own right, Liston selected (in addition to Rehak himself) noted trombonists Bennie Green, Al Grey, Jimmy Cleveland and Slide Hampton. The then up and coming pianist Ray Bryant appears on several tracks; on others Walter Davis Jr. adequately fills that role. Marty Flax on baritone sax, Nelson Boyd on bass and Charlie Persip on drums complete the line-up. Melba herself plays on all 12 titles.
A Liston original, Blues Melba, opens the album and she is joined by Benny Powell and Bennie Green followed by Al Grey. The Trolley Song, You Don’t Say, Insomnia, Very Syrian Business, Never Do An Abadanian and Zagred also feature Marty Flax And Charlie Persip. Of the remaining titles, What’s My Line Theme would have been familiar to the thousands of viewers who tuned in to the Sunday night TV show, while on The Dark Before Dawn, Melba plays a sonorous solo, followed by Bryant and Rehak and Hampton’s tuba. All these and the remaining tracks offer what would then soon be called “mainstream jazz” at its best. Seventy plus years on they have withstood the course of time and now reintroduce the incomparable Melba Liston to a new audience.
In his sleeve notes for the original LP (partly reprinted here) Leonard Feather wrote that the music was “happy, outgoing, occasionally ingenious but never pretentious”. He also expressed the hope that “perhaps the belated appearance of her first album as a leader will serve as a reminder that on the instrumental level, for many of her contemporaries, Melba Liston is the first lady of jazz”. That she encountered racial prejudice and sexual assaults during her musical career (at one point abandoning music for a post with the Los Angeles Board of Education) only adds to her stature and significance.
Discography
Blues Melba; The Trolley Song; Pow!;Wonder Why; Christmas Eve; What’s My Line Theme; You Don’t Say; The Dark Before The Dawn; Insomnia; Very Syrian Business; Never Do An Abadanian; Zagred This (51.38)
Liston (tb) on all tracks with, collectively: Bennie Green, Al Grey, Benny Powell, Jimmy Cleveland, Frank Rehak, Slide Hampton (tb); Kenny Burrell (g); George Joyner, Nelson Boyd (b); Charlie Persip, Frank Dunlop (d); Ray Bryant, Walter Davis Jr. (p); Marty Flax (bar). NYC, 1956-58.
Fresh Sound Records FSR CD 1145
