​​John F. Kennedy was the first president in modern White House history to sponsor jazz events. The first was a concert featuring the Newport Jazz All-Stars, Dave Brubeck Quartet, and the Tony Bennett Trio assembled on the Washington Monument grounds (Sylvan Theater) on August 28, 1962; and the second, a concert by the Paul Winter Sextet in the East Room on November 19, 1962.[1]

The jazz ice was broken. America’s musical poor sister was finally recognized. 

It was up to the successor president, Lyndon B. Johnson, to act on the jazz precedent set by JFK. And did he ever!

As if to make up for the long oversight, the Johnson administration hosted 16 jazz events during its 62-month run. Jazz had finally received its just due by a president and first lady whose musical tastes would not be described as refined but who believed it their duty to showcase the widest possible range of artistic expression at the nation’s showroom.

LBJ invited such notable jazz luminaries as Duke Ellington, Stan Getz, Sarah Vaughan, Charlie Byrd, and Dave Brubeck. See more details below:
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​LBJ made up for the decades of official neglect of America’s premier jazz composer by inviting Ellington and his orchestra to give the final performance at the White House Festival of the Arts on June 14, 1965. 

On an erected stage on the South Lawn, Duke presented sections of what would become his Far East Suite, followed by selections from his tone statement on the African American plight in America — Black, Brown and Beige (1943), featuring the lovely hymn “Come Sunday.” 
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He closed out the concert with an Ellington 12-hit-song medley that included “Solitude,” “Sophisticated Lady,” “I’m Beginning to See the Light,” and “Caravan.”

From the sound recording available at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC, here is a transcript of the event:

Opening Remarks by Dancer Gene Kelly
Historians tell us jazz began in New Orleans, and some historians tell us it began at a certain spot called Congo Square, a dusty lot down there. That may be so, I really don’t know, but I know it’s a long road from Congo Square to Carnegie Hall, and a longer musical way still.

But jazz made it, riding on the well-tailored coattails of Duke Ellington some twenty-two years ago. He and the great artists of his ensemble took Lady Jazz out of her off-the-racks cotton dress and put her in a long velvet gown.

​Ladies and Gentlemen, if there had never been a Duke Ellington, jazz would have had to invent him. So it’s with pride I present the Duke.

The Duke Ellington Orchestra
“Take the ‘A’ Train” 
[Applause follows.]

Duke Ellington Introduction
Thank you very much, Ladies and Gentlemen. That’s a warm welcome. Our first selection we would like to do is a result of our visit to the Far East a year and a half ago; we went to the Far East for the State Department on a cultural exchange program. And, of course, it was a tremendous inspiration to us all on being exposed to the beauty and enchantment of the Orient.

​And so as a result, we wrote a suite of numbers. We would like to play some of them now. We would like to say this is being done also in gratitude for the great people of the State Department Foreign Service office, who guided us so magnificently through the tour. It is called “Impressions of the Far East”:

The Duke Ellington Orchestra
“Amad” feature for Lawrence Brown (tb)
“Agra” ballad feature for Harry Carney (bs)
“Bluebird of Delhi” feature for Jimmy Hamilton (cl)
[Applause follows.]

Duke Ellington Introduction
Thank you. And now we would like to go from “Impressions of the Far East” to “Black, Brown and Beige,” which of course was done originally in 1943, and hasn’t really been done until this year in our concert appearances. This is our tone parallel to the history of the Negro in America. 
Tonight, we should like to do a suggestion of the work song theme and the spiritual theme, and a development of the two into a sort of montage. “Black, Brown and Beige”:

The Duke Ellington Orchestra
Work theme
Spiritual “Come Sunday” theme feature for Ray Nance (v) and Johnny Hodges (as)
Work and spiritual theme montage for trumpet, Harry Carney (bs), and Lawrence Brown (tb)

Lady Bird Johnson Wrap-Up
May I thank all the artists who have made this a rich, full, varied day for us all. It’s been wonderful. And now I’d like to have you all go to the tents for a bit of refreshment. I expect some of you need a hot cup of coffee. Perhaps you’d like to view the art in the garden and the east corridor. Thank you all. 
[Applause follows.] 

Duke Ellington Encore Introduction
I hate to impose on you like this, Ladies and Gentlemen, but we have a request for several of the things we have written and we’d like to play some of them for you that have become popular here. 

The Duke Ellington Orchestra
​“Solitude”
“I’ve Got It Bad” feature for Johnny Hodges (as)
“Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” feature for Duke (p)
“In the Mood”
“I’m Beginning to See the Light” (uptempo)
“Sophisticated Lady” feature for Harry Carney (bs)
“Caravan” (uptempo)
“The Opener” (uptempo feature for Paul Gonsalves [ts], Buster Cooper [tb], and Cat Anderson [tp])
“Things Ain’t What They Used to Be”

Total time: 44:44 minutes.

1. This and subsequent text is excerpted from Edward Allan Faine, Ellington at the White House, 1969 (Takoma Park, MD: IM Press, 2013), 24, 25, 32, and 211–214.

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​On the basis of the John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman album (Impulse!, 1963), music historian Will Friedwald concluded:
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In Serendipity Doo-Dah Book One, I discussed how the “My One and Only Love” track from the above album came about as an accidental lapse by Hartman on the first run-through. The singer was so transfixed by Coltrane’s tenor sax solo that he completely forgot to come back in for his vocal at the close of the recording, which necessitated a do-over, resulting in the classic performance now known by everyone.[2]

​Another happy accident took place on that date as well. On the ride out from Manhattan to Rudy Van Gelder’s studios in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, to record the six planned selections, the driver turned the car radio on, and there was the voice of Nat King Cole singing Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life.” 

Upon hearing the song, Hartman exclaimed, “Man! This is one of the great tunes of all time.”

Coltrane responded, “Do you know it?”

He did. 

“Lush Life” was the second tune recorded that day, and not surprisingly, it was a classic, an archetypical reading that used the Cole version as a template in terms of tempo and overall format.[3]

John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman became the one recording that exposed the most people to Strayhorn’s lovely song, all because the car radio was tuned to the right station.

CODA
Coltrane certainly knew “Lush Life”—he had recorded an instrumental version for Prestige in January, 1958, released on his album Lush Life three years later.
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1. Will Frieidwald, The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums (New York: Pantheon Books, 2017), 163.
2. Edward Allan Faine, Serendipity Doo-Dah: True Stories of Happy Musical Accidents (Takoma Park, MD: IM Press, 2017), 75–6.
3. Will Friedwald, The Great Albums, 166–7.

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1958 CLASSIC RECORD ALBUMS 

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In part 3 of this 1958 blog series, we saw that 1958 gave rise to the “cool” West Coast–style jazz, a response to the blues-oriented East Coast style. That led to a reaction from many East Coast musicians, who favored a harder approach.

FUNKY HARD BOP GAINS TOEHOLD 
Hard bop was the very antithesis of the West Coast cool style. It emphasized solos, all but discarded arrangements, and adopted blues and gospel devices.

The small independent labels Blue Note and Prestige chronicled hard bop much the same way Contemporary and Pacific Jazz did the West Coast style. Blue Note had such contract artists as Art Blakey (drums), Kenny Burrel (guitar), Sonny Clark (piano), Lee Morgan (trumpet), Hank Mobley (tenor saxophone), Horace Silver (piano), and Jimmy Smith (organ).

Prestige had Donald Byrd (trumpet), John Coltrane (tenor saxophone), Art Farmer (trumpet), Curtis Fuller (trombone), Red Garland (piano), Jacky Mclean (alto saxophone), Art Taylor (drums), and Mal Waldron (piano).

Contracts were as loose as the music and allowed musicians to record on either label, which they often did.

Taken together, the Blue Note and Prestige recordings shared a common sound: a loose, rough-hewn, raw-edged, dark sound that celebrated individual over collective expression. While most of the musicians knew each other and often played together, they were not, for the most part, members of working bands.

Guitarist Kenny Burrell recorded two minor gems, Blue Lights, with a stable of hard-boppers on Blue Note (five stars, DownBeat), and another with John Coltrane on Prestige (five stars, DownBeat), and Horace Silver added Six Pieces of Silver to his gospel-tinged hard bop library on Blue Note (five stars, DownBeat). 

​Lastly, Sonny Rollins recorded Freedom Suite on Riverside (four stars, DownBeat) with Oscar Pettiford (bass) and Max Roach (drums), which surpassed his Way Out West album on Contemporary.

While the hard boppers found their jazz audience in 1958, they had not yet broken through to the general public, except perhaps for Horace Silver, who was the only hard bopper to appear at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. No hard bop album finished in the top 20 jazz album sales for that year. ​
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​The first bop organist, Jimmy Smith, recorded and released albums faster than any musician alive, stocking record bins with his sixth through ninth albums for Blue Note that year. In a few short years, he would be known nationally for his hit recording of the title song of the movie Walk on the Wild Side.

​In 1958, the terms “funky” and “soul” appeared regularly in DownBeat articles to describe the R&B, gospel-tinged hard bop of musicians like Art Blakey and Horace Silver.

​This music sowed the seeds of the funky, hard bop soul music of the early 1960s, which propelled hard bop musicians to prominence and made household names of Cannonball Adderly, Art Blakey, Ramsey Lewis, Lee Morgan, Les McCann, Bobby Timmons, and Jimmy Smith, among others.
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The two Contemporary albums Way Out West, with Sonny Rollins (tenor saxophone), Ray Brown (bass), and Shelly Manne (drums), and Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section (the Miles Davis rhythm section) proved that West Coast jazzmen could play with East Coast jazzmen (as if there had been any doubt). The former album (five stars, DownBeat) reaffirmed Sonny Rollins as the premier tenor saxophone improviser of the day, while the latter (also five stars, DownBeat) confirmed Art Pepper as the premier improvising stylist on the West Coast. ​​

​Art Pepper Meets and subsequent albums also confirmed Pepper as one of the few unique voices on alto saxophone since Charlie Parker.
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Other albums on the Pacific Jazz and World Pacific labels, featuring artists like Pepper Adams, Manny Album, Chet Baker, and Gerry Mulligan, also received excellent reviews in DownBeat. West Coast jazz—cool or California Hard—was a fad that ceased to exist only in the minds of a few influential critics.

In the DownBeat Critics Poll that year, West Coast or cool school musicians still ranked highly—Jimmy Giuffre (#2 combo), Gerry Mulligan (#1 baritone saxophone), Stan Getz (#1 tenor saxophone), Lee Konitz (#1 alto saxophone), Shelly Manne (#1 drums), Barney Kessel (#1 guitar), and Tony Scott (#1 clarinet). The year-end Readers Poll showed little difference, except that cool-schooler Paul Desmond inched out Konitz on alto saxophone.

And it bears mentioning that the first Monterey Jazz Festival was held in 1958—the West Coast answer to the Newport Jazz Festival, which began in 1953.
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In the first part of this blog series, we looked at two of the four jazz innovators who came to the fore in 1958—Miles Davis, John Coltrane. Here, we move on to the other two: Thelonius Monk and Ornette Coleman.

THELONIUS MONK
Thelonius Monk, a jazz icon dedicated to his art, finally received his long-overdue recognition in 1958. Monk, who today is regarded as a major composer almost on a par with Duke Ellington, languished in obscurity until 1957. This lack of recognition stemmed in part from the loss of his cabaret card in 1951 due to a questionable drug charge, which prevented him from working in New York City (the jazz capital of the world and his hometown). The neglect was also the result of his highly personal approach to the piano, misunderstood by many musicians and critics alike.

But his recordings didn’t go totally unrecognized. A handful of New York critics consistently championed his work. In 1957, after regaining his cabaret card, Monk played at the Five Spot Café in lower Manhattan six nights a week to capacity crowds. Musicians and critics began to spread the word.

Here was a pianist whose approach eschewed the modern and embraced the traditional, an unabashed melodist—albeit, a quirky one—who embellished and extended the melody like jazzmen of the past, yet sounded “far out,” more modern than modern. Here was a pianist not easily copied or understood at first hearing. As the jazz world soon learned, Monk’s music consisted of more than idiosyncratic, dissonant melodies.

The Five Spot gig was but a prelude to Monk’s discovery as a major jazzman. Some say “rediscovery” because of his early 1940s contributions to bebop, but the truth is that very few Americans had ever heard of him prior to 1958. Monk was profiled in DownBeat that year in an article headlined “Finally Discovered” and was awarded first place on piano—for the first time—in both the Critics and Readers Polls.

With Monk’s discovery, Riverside, his recording company since 1955, heavily promoted his early albums and recorded new ones, often with jazz greats, no doubt to confirm his newfound position within the jazz tradition. In 1959, Monk showcased his music in a big-band setting at a memorable Town Hall concert.

Three years and many club dates later, he signed with Columbia, where he recorded eight well-publicized albums over the next seven years. Monk’s transformation from underground genius to jazz icon was celebrated in 1964 when he appeared on the cover of Time, joining Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, and Frank Sinatra as the only jazzmen to be so honored.

His 40-some composition legacy, which he essentially completed before his public discovery in 1958, equals that of any 20th-century composer.


ORNETTE!
Ornette Coleman also came to prominence in 1958 with an album on the small Contemporary label entitled Something Else! The LP sounded like some quirky brand of bebop and received neither general critical nor popular acclaim, although the DownBeat reviewer gave it four and a half stars.
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Has there ever been a year in jazz like 1958? Jazz was literally in the air—on radio, TV, and the silver screen.

Four jazz icons came to prominence that year. Record bins overflowed with numerous recordings that would become enduring jazz classics. Public awareness of jazz was near an all-time high due to the notoriety of the beatnik jazz subculture, the popularity of West Coast jazz, and the musicality of household-name jazz musicians like Basie, Brubeck, Ellington, Fitzgerald, Getz, Shearing, and Sinatra.

And jazz was big business for the first time since the 1930s.

Four icons—Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, and Ornette Coleman—came to the fore in 1958, each to a different degree of public recognition and critical acclaim. They not only changed the direction of jazz forever but now rank among the handful of true jazz innovators who preceded them: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, Earl Hines, Jelly Roll Morton, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and Lester Young, to name the most prominent.

MILES AHEAD . . . WAY AHEAD
First and foremost, 1958 was the year of trumpeter Miles Davis. Record bins were filled by his prodigious output since his return to jazz in 1954, including his second full-scale masterpiece Walkin’. That album spawned the funky, hard bop jazz of the late 1950s and 1960s, much as his first masterpiece, Birth of the Cool, launched the “cool” West Coast jazz of the 1950s.

More importantly, record bins held the recorded work of his first great quintet: Paul Chambers (bass), John Coltrane (tenor saxophone), Red Garland (piano), Philly Joe Jones (drums), and, of course, Miles himself (trumpet). In terms of impact, these recordings—five albums in all—can be compared to Louis Armstrong’s classic small-group Hot Five and Hot Seven performances of the late 1920s. Miles’s quintet defined anew the potential for small-group jazz and expanded the emotional range from unbridled joy (Judy Garland) to fierce drive (Coltrane) to alternating complex sorrow and crisp rapture (Miles), often in the course of a single tune.