With one or two notable exceptions, making jazz is a team effort. Great performances are invariably great because all of the constituent parts – each artist, the arranger, and with recordings the producer and the engineer – make an essential contribution to the whole.

Since the beginning of recorded music performers have striven for new heights of technical and artistic achievement and over the years a continuous stream of jazz men and women have set extraordinary standards of excellence in their particular disciplines. Many have found success in more than one skill, such as playing and arranging, but only a few have attained the peripatetic success of instrumentalist, leader, composer, arranger and producer Oliver Nelson.

Born in 1932 into a musical family in St Louis (his brother played saxophone with Cootie Williams in the 1940s and his sister was a singer and pianist) Nelson started learning piano at six and began on the saxophone aged eleven. He turned professional at fifteen, playing with local St Louis bands such as Jetar-Pillars orchestra and George Hudson. In 1950 he joined the rip-roaring Louis Jordan’s band as second alto-sax player and arranger where he remained until he was conscripted in 1951, spending the next two years in a Marine Corp ensemble. After his national service Nelson returned to Missouri where he spent the next four years studying music composition and theory at Washington and Lincoln universities.

This was a new variation on the traditional ‘dues-paying learn as you go’ jazz career path but 1950s America was a very different musical environment even from the casually exploitative and tough-living jazz life of even a decade before. With new found prosperity and a burgeoning youth population the US entertainment industry was booming and jazz was a beneficiary, thanks to the spread of television, dedicated radio music stations and an increasingly profitable record industry. Television, advertising and the larger record labels were at the forefront of technical advances and introducing new outlets for music, bringing with them new opportunities for artists and technicians alike.

A new breed of performer began to emerge, still primarily talent-led but with a grounding in the technical as well as the creative, and with an eye to the growing commercial possibilities. Nelson was well suited to the new realities; brought up in an old time jazz environment, a naturally skilful and talented player but also, given his education and the opportunities thrown up by the rapidly expanding music industry, gifted enough to enter into all aspects of music-making and excel in each one

Following graduation in 1958 Nelson moved to New York. He was already known to the jazz cognoscenti as a skilful alto, tenor and occasional soprano saxophonist so quickly found work, albeit briefly, with Erskine Hawkins, Wild Bill Davis and (in a stint on the West Coast) Louie Bellson as well as becoming house arranger at the celebrated Apollo Theatre in Harlem. He started recording as a leader in 1959 on some small group sessions and played with Quincy Jones’ orchestra between 1960-61 which gained him wider recognition and a deal of respect in the jazz community but his big breakthrough came in 1961 with Blues And The Abstract Truth.

With a fabulous line-up (Nelson on tenor and alto, a brilliant Eric Dolphy on alto and flute, a young Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, George Barrow on baritone, Bill Evans on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Roy Haynes on drums) and six superb Nelson compositions, this was one of the top albums of the year and has since been acknowledged as a true jazz classic. With the success of the LP Nelson’s career took off with a string of big band, small group and orchestral recordings throughout the 60s. But good as his playing was, at the same time demand for his composing and arranging skills steadily increased and he became virtually the studio arranger for Norman Granz’s Verve label, collaborating with Cannonball Adderley, Johnny Hodges, Jimmy Smith, Wes Montgomery, Stanley Turrentine, Billy Taylor among many others.

By 1967 Nelson had become one of the two most sought after composer / arrangers in the business when he was enticed to Los Angeles to write for television and movies, creating the theme tunes for Ironside, Columbo and The Six-Million Dollar Man in the process, as well as producing and arranging for the likes of Nancy Wilson, James Brown, The Temptations and Diana Ross.

Although he continued to play and write for jazz recording dates, commercial music projects took an increasing amount of his time. Nelson’s talents had taken him beyond jazz into a larger musical universe and, along with various contemporaries who had trodden a similar path, he came in for a fair amount of criticism from jazz purists. It is doubtful that Nelson would have abandoned his eclectic musical endeavours in favour of jazz but this was never put to the test as he died suddenly from a heart attack in 1975 at the age of 43. Irrespective of his career choices Oliver Nelson’s jazz legacy is testimony enough to his contribution and significance in the story of the music.

One of its most important elements was his big band work in the 1960s, where his composing and arranging skills were at their very best. In recognition of this highly influential period Mosaic has now issued The Argo, Verve and Impulse Big Band Studio Sessions, a six CD box set featuring the complete body of his big band work for these three labels. The box set comprises 90 tracks spanning 1962-67 which, in addition to dates he led under his own name, includes sessions he wrote, scored and conducted for the Leonard Feather’s Encyclopaedia of Jazz All Stars, The Jazz Impressions Orchestra, Shirley Scott, Ray Brown and Milt Jackson, Jimmy Smith both as leader and with Wes Montgomery and Pee Wee Russell, along with an album length tribute to a fallen leader, The Kennedy Dream, and his own celebrated reworking of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf for Smith. As usual Mosaic includes comprehensive liner notes and a track by track analysis of the music. A revaluation of Oliver Nelson’s work and influence within jazz is long overdue and this is a very good place to start.

OLIVER NELSON:
THE ARGO, VERVE AND IMPULSE BIG BAND SESSIONS
CAt No : 987 8064

DISC ONE Full Nelson; Skokiaan; Miss Fine; Majorca; Cool; Back Woods; Lila's Theme; Ballad For Benny; Hoe Down; Paris Blues; What Kind Of Fool Am I; You Love But Once; Hobo Flats; Post No Bills; A Bientot; Three Plus One; Take Me With You; Daylie's Double; Teenie's Blues; Laz-ie Kate.

DISC TWO St. Louis Blues; I Remember Bird; Ricardo's Dimemma; Patterns For Orchestra; The Sidewalks Of New York; Greensleeves; John Brown's Blues; Twelve Tone Blues; A Typical Day In New York; The East Side/The West Side; 125th And Seventh Ave; A Penthouse Dawn; One For Duke; Complex City.

DISC THREE Roll 'Em; For Dancers Only; Sophisticated Swing; Sometimes I'm Happy; Lined With A Groove; Lazy Theme; Now Hear My Meaning; In A Crowd; Sound Piece For Jazz Orchestra; Flute Salad; The Lady From Girl Talk.

DISC FOUR Let The Word Go Forth; A Genuine Peace; The Rights Of All; Tolerance; The Artists' Rightful Place; Jacqueline; Day In Dallas; John Kennedy Memory Waltz; Love Is Just Around The Corner; This Is It; Memories Of You; Pee Wee's Blues; The Shadow Of Your Smile; Ja-Da; A Good Man Is Hard To Find; Bopol; I'm Coming Virginia; Six And Four.

DISC FIVE Walk On The Wild Side; Ol' Man River; In A Mellow Tone; Step Right Up; Hobo Flats; Blueberry Hill; Walk Right In; Trouble In Mind; The Preacher; Meditation; I Can't Stop Loving You; Slaughter On Tenth Avenue; Who's Afraid Of Virginia Wolff, Part One; Who's Afraid Of Virginia Wolff, Part Two.

DISC SIX The Bird/The Duck/The Cat/ The Grandfather/The Wolf/The Hunter/Peter; Duck Theme/Jimmy And The Duck/Peter's Theme/Meal Time; Elegy For A Duck; Cat In A Tree; Capture Of The Wolf; Finale: Parade/Peter Plays Some Blues; One Mint Julep; Blues And The Abstract Truth; Down By The Riverside; Night Train; Death March; Milestones; 'Round Midnight.

Return To The Features menu >>