Don Patterson, Booker Ervin & Sonny Stitt on Prestige

I've been buying many, many Fantasy CDs after this great company with its huge available backlist had been taken over by Concord. There were some sales going on, notably on Germany's Zweitausendeins, and I also looked around the web for other stuff, completing for instance my OJC run of all of Yusef Lateef's great Riverside and Prestige albums and getting all four of Randy Weston's early albums (you'll also need the Dawn album "Modern Art of Jazz" if you want to have all of his music preceeding the material collected on the great Mosaic Select 3CD set).



One series that I also started stocking up on a bit is the "Legends of Acid Jazz" releases of mostly (or excusively?) Prestige material by artists such as Don Patterson, Sonny Stitt, Red Holloway, Gene Ammons etc.
The most recent arrival, reaching me two days ago, is the first volume of Don Patterson/Booker Ervin (the second one is called Just Friends and billed to Patterson/Ervin/Houston Person).

The music on these discs is arranged by sessions, rather than just pulling together original albums. Thus the Patterson/Ervin includes the complete May 12, 1964 date, adding "Hip Cake Walk" (from the album of the same name, Prestige 7349) and "Love Me With All Your Heart" (from "Patterson's People", Prestige 7381) to the complete "The Exciting New Organ of Don Patterson" album (Prestige 7331).

So I went checking (on jazzdisco.org - see links) what exactly was on the original "Patterson's People" and "Hip Cake Walk" albums.

"Hip Cake Walk" thus consists of the long title tune, as well as of four titles contained on the Patterson/Ervin/Person Legends Acid Jazz Just Friends - it's thus available in its entirety on Fantasy's CD reissues.

Then how about "Patterson's People"? Things get a bit more complicated there. The jazzdisco site says it contained 5 tracks from 3 sessions "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone" from March 19, 1964 with Sonny Stitt, "Love Me With All Your Heart" and "People" from May 12, 1964 with Booker Ervin (huh? why then is "People" not on the Patterson/Ervin Legends of Acid Jazz when that one compiled the May 12 session?) and finally "Sentimental Journey" and "Theme for Dee" from July 10, 1964 (again with Ervin).
Three of the Ervin tracks are on the Just Friends CD, but "People" is missing (although the first Legends of Acid Jazz CD runs only 63 minutes!), and the Stitt track is on the Stitt/Patterson CD The Boss Men (compiling the complete 1965 albums "Night Crawler" and "The Boss Men" with two additional tracks from that March 19, 1964 date of Patterson's, "Please Don't Talk..." and "42639"). That last title is not listed on jazzdisco's entry for "Patterson's People", nor is it listed under the March 19, 1964 date. The rest of that date, originally on "Shangri-La" (Prestige 7332) makes up half of the great Sonny Stitt Legends of Acid Jazz CD titled Low Flame (the other half is a Jazzland album from 1962).

But that's not all yet... Just Friends contains an additional title from the July 10, 1964 date, its title track. That one was released on "Tune Up!" (Prestige 7852). That one also contained "Flyin' Home" (from the August 25, 1964 date with Stitt, Ervin and Patterson, the rest of which was on "Soul People", Prestige 7372), "Blues For Mom" (from June 2, 1969, the rest of which was on "Oh, Happy Day", Prestige 7640 - I don't have it), as well as the title track, from the September 15, 1969 date with Stitt, Patterson and Grant Green (the whole date is on the Stitt/Patterson Brothers-4 CD, originally the rest was on the albums "Brothers-4", Prestige 7738, and "Donnybrook", Prestige 7816).

So that leaves us with an incomplete session (May 12, 1964 - missing "People", logically it should have been part of the Patterson/Ervin Legends of Acid Jazz), an incomplete album ("Tune Up!" - missing the one track from 1969, I assume it would best fit onto a CD with the rest of that date) as well as a tune not listed in the crappy disco at all, "42639" (what a weird title... that - so says the "Boss Men" CD - had been part of the "Patterson's People" album, originally).
The "Boss Men" blurb on the back of the disc has a goof, too: it states that the two 1964 numbers are taken from "Shangri-La" (on Sonny Stitt's Legends of Acid Jazz titled "Low Flame").
(And just in case: "42639" is NOT the missing track with Booker Ervin, but indeed it sounds all like Sonny Stitt there!)



The Stitt/Ervin/Patterson Soul People CD contains a bonus track, "There Will Never Be Another You", from another session (August 5, 1966, released on Don Patterson's "Soul Happening" - another one I don't have). That bonus track is not listed on jazzdisco.org, either.


And just in case you wonder, there are a few more recommended Stitt CDs that seem to be ok, discographically spoken:

Sonny Stitt's first Legends of Acid Jazz entry (1971's "Turn It On!" and "Black Vibrations", mostly with Leon SPencer on organ, whom old buddy Patterson replaces for a couple of tune)

Sonny Stitt's Night Letters (pairing the 1963 "Soul Shack/Sonny Stitt with Jack McDuff" with 1969's "Night Letter" - Patterson isn't present there, at all, but it's a very good one!)

Then, there's also Stitt/Patterson's Legends of Acid Jazz Vol. 2 (I guess Vol. 1 would be the 1971 Stitt pairing?), compiling two great albums from 1968: "Funk You!" w/Charles McPherson and Pat Martino and "Soul Electricity" with Billy Butler on guitar. (Note that jazzdisco fails to list the track "Stella By Starlight" from the second album!)

Another fine one is Stitt's Goin' Down Slow, but that one's in a different bag: an album with strings and a quartet date with Hampton Hawes, both from 1972.


Not to forget: Billy James is the drummer on almost all of these dates!
(That is all except the two albums on "Night Letter" and Stitt's Legends of Acid Jazz and "Goin Down Slow" discs)