Mainstream Records Jazz: A Loud Minority

Some time back, I posted a review of a compilation of soul, soul jazz, and funk from Bob Shad’s Mainstream Records. I’ve been curious about Shad because his lengthy career as a record label owner extended from the 1940s through the 1970s, from jazz and blues on his Sittin’ In Records to rock and roll and jazz on Time, Shad, and Brent Records to the aforesaid productions on Mainstream. Add to that a stint as producer of such artists as Clifford Brown, Max Roach, and Sarah Vaughn on Emarcy Records, and you’ve got quite a career. Also, as far as I can ascertain, he was a relatively decent guy in a cut-throat business (and Judd Apatow’s grandfather!).

You can get a pretty good picture of Mainstream’s early 70s jazz output on A Loud Minority, an Ace Records compilation. Although the subtitle says: “Deep Spiritual Jazz from Mainstream records, 1970–1973,” my own version would read “Late 60s Blue Note/Prestige/Contemporary Hard Bop with Electric Piano” instead. The artists (Blue Mitchell. Harold Land, Roy Haynes, Johnny Coles, Charles McPherson, etc.) and the tunes (almost all originals by band members) are right out of that period, which was an early manifestation of the ongoing “Jazz is dead” prophesy. The striking thing about this collection is how underrated Mainstream was and is as a harbor for fugitives from those dying or transforming labels. Like Muse and Xanadu in the 1970s and 80s, Shad gave these musicians an outlet when the majors were dumping jazz and buying out the older independents.  

Overall, A Loud Minority is a strong collection that repays repeated listening. In addition to the artists mentioned above, there’s fine work by Hadley Caliman, Frank Foster, and Buddy Terry, whose Kamili is closest to the post-Coltrane spirituality referred to on the album cover. Another gem is Johnny Coles playing Miles Davis’s Petits Machins. Note: Contrary to the track list and liner notes, Charisma, the Charles McPherson entry, is really Bronislaw Kaper’s Invitation―beautifully done, of course.

I’m impressed enough by the quality of A Loud Minority to want to investigate Mainstream’s jazz recordings in more depth, and check out other types of music from Bob Shad’s long and varied career. Meanwhile, here are a couple of standout tracks: Kamili and Hadley Caliman's Watercress.

Ace/BGP: The Message: Soul, Funk, and Jazzy Grooves from Mainstream Records

America owes a debt of gratitude to Ace Records. For decades, this UK-based outfit and its subsidiary labels have hunted down, remastered, annotated, and repackaged jump blues, doowop, R &B, Northern soul, 50s and 60s sunshine pop, psychedelia, rock instrumentals, and a good amount of oddball stuff that together demonstrate the incredible richness of our nation’s musical history over the past six decades. Thanks to a familiar blend of corporate greed, negligence, and indifference, coupled with the nature of our ever more disposable culture, the U.S. often seems incapable of performing this important service.  

Take, for example, Ace’s resuscitation of Mainstream Records. Bob Shad was a veteran producer of jazz (Charlie Parker at Savoy, Clifford Brown and Sarah Vaughn at Mercury) who previously had run a small record label (Sittin’ In With) that put out some fine late 40s blues sides. He also dabbled in rock with his own Brent subsidiary and jazz with Time Records. On 1964, he started Mainstream, which for the rest of the 60s issued jazz and rock material. Ace has issued some his popsike stuff on a two-CD compilation and the straight jazz on another CD, along with individual albums by Blue Mitchell, Harold Land, and Hadley Caliman.

By 1970, though, that straight jazz was in one of its eternally recurrent declines, so Shad moved into soul jazz, recording both new vocalists like Ellerene Harding and Alice Clark as well as veteran musicians like Curtis Fuller and Charles Kynard in beat-laden contexts. The folks at Ace were canny enough to pick out this thread in the Mainstream tapestry and put together The Message: Soul, Funk, and Jazzy Grooves from Mainstream Records on the BGP (Beat Goes Public) label. As usual, it’s got a booklet containing a brief introductory essay, commentary on each track, and numerous photographs of the artists.

I really wasn’t sure what to expect when I bought this CD, so playing it was a bit of an adventure. After I played House of Rising Funk by Chubokos, I thought, “Pretty good!” by the time I got to Afrique’s cover of Manu Dibango’s Soul Makossa, I was foot tapping and head bobbing too much to think about anything. Thanks to the notes by dean Rudland, I also knew that these two bands were the same group of studio/mainstream guys working under different names—thanks, Dean. There are so many great cuts on this record that it’s hard to know which ones I should call out. Funky Butt by the Delegates (another studio band, it got its name because the 1972 political conventions were going on at the time) features David T. Walker on guitar and Charles Kynard (also featured on a couple of other tracks) on Hammond B-3. Ellerine Harding kills To Whom It May Concern (All I Need), which also has a bit of a political slant (“I don’t need your study groups or your benign neglect” and “I don’t need your Doctor Jensens to study my IQ”).  Maxine Weldon really works out on Grits Ain’t Groceries, and Sarah Vaughn (!) gets a bit political AND spacy/funky on Inner City Blues (Make me Want to Holler).

Most of the tracks on The Message are instrumentals. The Jackson Five’s I Want You Back doesn’t seem to call for a 65-piece band named Bobby Shad & the Bad Men (if I ran a record company, I’d do my thing, too!) but it’s actually excellent—check out the dueling trumpets toward the end. Blue Mitchell and Curtis Fuller manage their funk quite nicely, and lots of great jazz artists pop up throughout (Don Pullen on the B-3 for Charles Williams’s Bacon Butt Fat?  Why not? Anyway, he acquits himself nobly.

OK, I’m totally taken with The Message. (I do wish that Blue Mitchell had played a little more on the title track, but you can’t have everything.) Ace has uncovered and revived a trend and some artists that I didn’t know about, as well as others with whom I was familiar but in a new context. I’ll leave you with Patience by Dave Hubbard, one of the former, who played on many organ trio dates for Prestige and other labels but recorded only this one Mainstream album commercially. It features Albert Dailey, one of Stan Getz’s favorite pianists, in an un-Getzian bit of post-Trane funk. Sadly, when I Googled Hubbard, I learned that he had died just a few days ago, so this appreciation is also a tribute to him. I hope you enjoy it.