The Remarkable Carmell Jones & Business Meetin’, Carmell Jones (Fresh Sound FSRCD 758)

A century of jazz has been full of the lives of superb musicians of unrecognised and forgotten brilliance, and trumpeter Carmell Jones was certainly one of these.

He was born in Kansas City in 1936, as KC was swinging wildly with the hugely infections beat and virtuoso musicianship of the Count Basie Orchestra and many other successful big bands. 

After military service, two years at the University of Kansas and leading a band in his home city, he moved to the jazz nexus of Los Angeles, where his talent, inspired and and modelled upon the beautiful burnished tone of Clifford Brown, soon found him in the studios of Pacific Jazz. In June 1961 he recorded the album The Remarkable Carmell Jones and 10 months later he was back to wax a second album, Business Meetin’.

Scooped up by the fertile LA jazz scene, he played and recorded with West Coast luminaries such as reedmen Harold Land and Bud Shank, and became a featured hornman in the Gerald Wilson Orchestra (1961-63) before touring for a year with pianist Horace Silver and making a major contribution to his finest album among many, Song For My Father, in 1964.

Then, tempted by dreams of Europe, he moved to Berlin in 1964, leaving behind all the opportunities that his first California success had promised. He stayed in Europe until 1980, when he returned to Kansas City, his reputation now obscure, despite a powerful 1982 album for the little-known Revelation label.

So the reissue of those first two impressive albums as a Fresh Sound twofer brings back the drama of his debut sound. 

On The Remarkable Carmell Jones he is joined by the ebullient Land, another LA migrant from Houston, Texas, pianist Frank Strazzeri from Boston, bassist Gary Peacock from Idaho (still a part of Keith Jarrett’s trio) and San Diego drummer Leon Petties.

Off they go with Peacock’s bass plunging deep on the jaunty I’m Gonna Go Fishin’. When Jones dives in with his solo, his tone and noteplay immediately impress. Land is his usual darkly fluent self and Strazzeri relaxed with many a bite at his keys. 

Come Rain or Come Shine shows Jones’s balladic intensity as the lyricism pours out of his horn and the up-tempo Night Tide is a sprint across the beach for Jones and Land with Peacock’s agile bass as pacemaker.

Jones the composer wrote the not-so-melancholy Sad March, with the two horns burning with a quiet fire, and Stellisa is a homespun theme dedicated to Jones’s mother Stella and his niece Lisa. 

Land and Jones share the opening chorus before Jones builds his solo with love in every note. Land’s lingering notes are beautiful buttressed by Peacock’s evocative twang.

The album’s final track was Full Moon and Empty Arms, a Rachmaninoff melody transformed to a jazz flier, with first of all Land and then a sprightly Jones flickering through their choruses with a joyous zest.

Then come the seven tracks of Business Meetin’, and a groovy palaver it must have been, with the same quintet for the first four tracks — drummer Donald Dean replaces Petties — and a nonet with four extra saxophones and arranger Gerald Wilson for the final three. 

That’s Good starts off the session, and it’s an apt title, with Jones’s collapsing cadences and Peacock’s eternal bounce grounding the fivesome. 

By the time Hip Trolley starts its rolling they are truly in the groove as if these musicians from so many places in the US have found their jazz home together. Land in particular is fulsome, clear-toned and translucent, full of Texas assurance.

Beautiful Love is a cradle-rocker, with Strazzeri’s notes tender and gentle. The title tune introduces the bustling nonet with Jones playing over the five saxophones. 

The much-played Stella by Starlight produces a rhapsodic lead for Jones and Toddler shows Wilson’s arranging skills, a springing Strazzeri chorus and Jones flourishing in the album’s final sale.

Strange that a trumpeter’s debut albums should show him at his best in a context that was so all-supportive and sad that he had few later opportunities. But there is more than enough in these two albums to show the true beauty and talent of Carmell from Kansas.