Art Farmer • Benny Golson - Meet The Jazztet

"This is a musical organization and we want it to sound like that, not like the usual jam session that goes under that name. The jam session can be a wonderful thing, but it’s a hell of a thing to try to pull off every night!" That’s the way Art Farmer thinks of the aims and ideas of The Jazztet. 

"What we’re actually trying to do is to get a loose sound that allows each man a chance to say what he has to say musically on his instrument, but still have uniformity and togetherness". That’s the way it is for Benny Golson. 

The Jazztet, in case you are meeting it for the first time is a musical organization that does not sound like the usual jam session, and in which each man has a chance to say what he, has to say, but in which there is still uniformity and togetherness.

The genesis of The Jazztet goes back to the summer of 1959. "Art had in mind to organize a group and approached me", Golson says, "and I had in mind to get a group and approached him!"

Farmer and Golson are both careful planners and this is reflected in the group. Arrangements are mutually discussed and plotted, and all the rest of the minutae of organizing and routining a band is a community enterprise. In a night club each member of the front line is given a feature number, and it is interesting, in view of their concept of the group as a unit, that even on such tunes the other two men are busy now and again with little backgrounds and fills.

They have deliberately chosen a name that does not include the name of any of the men and they are willing to fight club owners and anyone else for the length of time necessary to put this name across. "Naturally I think the music itself is the important thing", Golson says. "If you re really producing the music, you can call the group anything!" But The Jazztet is what they have elected to call it and it will stick. You can mark it down in your book as one of the groups in jazz that will make it. *Ralph J. Gleason (liner notes)*

The first album of "Meet Jazztet" is a musical manifesto of the first order. Meet The Jazztet must undoubtedly be placed among the jewels of modern jazz. Essential. *Ernest Stevenson*

When people discuss the cream of the hard-bop crop, names such as Clifford Brown and Max Roach, Art Blakey, and Horace Silver usually rise to the top. Without question, the Jazztet deserves inclusion in that discussion. Co-leaders Farmer and Golson had already made names for themselves before the sextet's 1960 recording debut; upstarts Curtis Fuller and McCoy Tyner were well on their way. Benefiting from Golson's usual crafty arrangements, the ensemble rolls through 10 cuts, offering a nifty combination of down-home funk and lyrical flair. Two of Golson's most revered compositions — the gentle "I Remember Clifford", led by Farmer's silky trumpet, and the urgent "Blues March" — accompany the original recording of Golson's "Killer Joe", which includes his verbal description of the title character. The band also rips merrily through Cole Porter's "It's All Right with Me" and struts easily through Gershwin's "It Ain't Necessarily So". *Marc Greilsamer*

One of the top hard bop contingents of the '50s and '60s, the Art Farmer and Benny Golson co-led group known as the Jazztet featured some of the best original charts and soloing of the entire era. While the group was only in existence between 1959-1962, its excellent reputation could rest on this stunning disc alone. Cut in 1960, the ten-track date features four of Golson's classic originals ("I Remember Clifford", "Blues March", "Park Avenue Petite", and "Killer Joe") and one very fetching Farmer-penned cut ("Mox Nix"). The rest of the standards-heavy mix is given the golden touch by the sextet. And what a combo this is — besides Farmer's svelte trumpet lines and Golson's frenetically vaporous tenor solos, one gets a chance to hear a young but already very accomplished McCoy Tyner, the tart and mercurial trombonist Curtis Fuller, and the streamlined rhythm tandem of Addison Farmer and Lex Humphries. An essential hard bop title. *Stephen Cook*

Here is the swinging debut of the Jazztet, the group that set the jazz world on fire just a few months after they made their official first public appearance on November 16, 1959 in New York’s Five Spot café.

Art Farmer and Benny Golson led this sextet that sounds like a big band, with the idea of giving ample space to each soloist, but within a framework that did more than set up lines at the beginning and end in a jam session type of group. With composer-arranger Golson doing the majority of the writing, this was fully accomplished. "I feel that with three horns, we can get any effect we want. How do we get such a big sound? It’s really no trick. It’s there and obvious — you just have to pick the right notes. They’re there. You have to emulate the things you have in your mind", said Golson.

The Jazztet won the new star award among jazz groups in the 1960 Down Beat International Jazz Critics poll. *Jordi Pujol*

Side 1

1 - Serenata

(Anderson, Parrish)

2 - It Ain't Necessarily So

(G. and I. Gershwin)

3 - Avalon

(Rose, DeSylva, Jolson)

4 - I Remember Clifford

(Golson)

5 - Blues March

(Golson)

Side 2

6 - It's All Right With Me

(Porter)

7 - Park Avenue Petite

(Golson)

8 - Mox Nix

(Farmer)

9 - Easy Living

(Robin, Rainger)

10 - Killer Joe

(Golson)

Art Farmer (trumpet), Benny Golson (tenor sax, narrator [#10]), Curtis Fuller (trombone), McCoy Tyner (piano), Addison Farmer (bass), Lex Humphries (drums).

Recorded at Nola Penthouse Studios, New York City, February 6, 9 and 10, 1960.