Dorothy Ashby and Frank Wess - In a Minor Groove (Clear Swirl Vinyl)

Clear With Red, Green & Purple Swirl Vinyl LP

This is Real Gone Music's colored-vinyl edition of In a Minor Groove: one LP, pressed clear with red, green and purple swirls, four tracks a side. Real Gone cut it from the original mono sources rather than the rechanneled stereo, with its jumbled running order, that Prestige later used when it repackaged the album as Dorothy Ashby Plays for Beautiful People. The original New Jazz cover art returns, as do Ira Gitler's sleeve notes. The label also sells the album on black vinyl.

The album was recorded on September 19, 1958, at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Hackensack, New Jersey, with Bob Weinstock producing, and was issued that year on Prestige's New Jazz imprint as NJLP 8209. Ashby plays harp and Frank Wess plays flute, with Herman Wright, like Ashby a Detroit native, on bass and Roy Haynes on drums. It is one of two albums the pair made for Prestige in 1958; the other, Hip Harp, was recorded that March with Art Taylor on drums.

Two of the eight pieces, "Rascallity" and "It's a Minor Thing," are Ashby's own. The rest come from other writers: Cole Porter's "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To," Kern and Harbach's "Yesterdays," Oscar Pettiford's "Bohemia After Dark," Lecuona and Russell's "Taboo," "Autumn in Rome" by Cahn, Cicognini and Weston, and Dietz and Schwartz's "Alone Together." Real Gone's notes single out "Bohemia After Dark" for the way Ashby turns her harp into a rhythm guitar.

Ashby was born in Detroit in 1932, studied at Cass Technical High School and Wayne State University, and had made the harp her main instrument by 1952. Her first full jazz LP, The Jazz Harpist, was recorded for Savoy in 1957, also with Wess, and she went on to make Afro-Harping in 1968 and The Rubaiyat of Dorothy Ashby in 1970. Her recordings have since been sampled by hip hop artists including Pete Rock, J Dilla and Madlib. Wess, a flutist and saxophonist, was a member of Count Basie's orchestra from the early 1950s until 1964.

Tracklist

Side One

1. Rascallity
2. You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To
3. It's a Minor Thing
4. Yesterdays

Side Two

5. Bohemia After Dark
6. Taboo
7. Autumn in Rome
8. Alone Together