Don and Booker
It doesn’t take much to become a jazz underdog. To be involved with a music that has nearly always struggled for general cultural recognition—and, even more importantly in our consumer society, commercial viability—is a risky venture that promises neither fame nor fortune. You stay in the game for the love of the music, or you get out. Those who remain and continue to create, no matter the difficulties, can—if they’re lucky—achieve heroic status within the jazz community. Or maybe not.
Don Schlitten, who died on February 9 at nearly 94, was an imaginative and driven jazz producer with an affinity for underdogs—musical personalities who, despite reaching artistic maturity, were no longer in the vanguard and were recognized mainly by their peers. On the record labels Cobblestone and Muse, Schlitten championed bop players still in their prime; later, on his own Xanadu Records, he produced superlative recordings by such below-the-radar masters as Barry Harris, Jimmy Rowles, Al Cohn, and Charles McPherson. This work took place during the 1970s, when mainstream jazz was about as popular in the U.S. as rugby. In my view, he qualifies as a behind-the-scenes hero, though I wonder whether his name rings any bell among those in today’s jazz milieu.
All I’m certain of is that Schlitten masterminded two of my favorite recordings of the era: Body and Soul, featuring three luminaries—Cohn, Jaki Byard, and Zoot Sims—and Picture of Heath, possibly saxophonist Jimmy Heath’s finest album as a small group leader. These stand alongside scores of other memorable releases by exceptional instrumentalists and singers who were out of step with prevailing musical trends or had simply fallen through the cracks of visibility. I most admire Schlitten for keeping the faith with the older players he clearly cherished.
By the time he started Xanadu in 1975, Schlitten had already enjoyed an illustrious career as a producer, having supervised important sessions for Prestige Records throughout the 1960s. It was during that period that he produced albums for the artist I most closely associate with him: the tenor saxophonist Booker Ervin. It’s difficult to find a less-than-rewarding recording by Ervin—a full-blooded stylist who was open to the new sounds brewing during the Sixties, yet who never let go of the swinging blues and bop he grew up on in Texas. But the recordings he made with Schlitten from 1963 to 1966 represent a special peak.
Schlitten was a take-charge producer, one who played a major role in choosing both the supporting musicians around Ervin and the material he recorded. His unerring taste ensured success. On two of the nine albums they collaborated on—The Freedom Book (1963) and The Space Book (1964)—Schlitten assembled a quartet that featured the rhythm section of pianist Jaki Byard, bassist Richard Davis, and drummer Alan Dawson that blended the adventurous harmonic and tonal innovations of the era’s new jazz with rock-solid swing, a foundation that suited Ervin perfectly. Both albums are among the highlights of an eventful period in jazz and have little aged.
Schlitten used Byard, Davis, and Dawson in various combinations on other Ervin recordings, but on the album I want to highlight, The Song Book (1964), he substituted one of his favorite pianists, the illustrious Tommy Flanagan, for Byard. Concentrating on standards, The Song Book finds Ervin continuing his winning streak.
On Jerome Kern’s evergreen ballad “Yesterdays,” Ervin, after an appropriately melancholy reading of the melody, waits his turn while Flanagan delivers an extended, typically elegant improvisation. (And don’t miss Dawson’s sensitively impassioned support throughout the performance.) Ervin’s concluding solo is suffused with longing, an emotional stance mirrored in his trademark sound—full of dark corners and cloaked notes.
A great balladeer, Ervin was also a full-fledged swinger, as proved by another standout from The Song Book. “Just Friends,” made justly famous by Charlie Parker’s 1949 recording, gives Ervin a chance to display his huge sound and formidable technique; he was clearly listening to Coltrane but channeling that imposing influence through his own slashing yet poised sensibility.
Ervin was no visionary innovator, but he was, from first to last, his own man—no one sounded like him. Don Schlitten knew what Ervin had in him, and on recordings like these, he brought it out in full.