- My Funny Valentine (Richard Rodgers/Lorenz Hart)
- Israel (John Carisi)
- Catherine’s Theme (Francis Lai)
- Am I Blue/Sonnyboy (Harry Akst-Grant Clarke/Lew Brown-B. G. DeSylva-Ray Henderson-Al Jolson)
- Never My Love (Donald Addrisi/Richard Addrisi)
- Saturday Night Is the Loneliest Night of The Week (Jule Styne/Sammy Cahn)
- St. James Infirmary (Irving Mills)
- Django (John Lewis)
- Try to Remember (Tom Jones/Harvey Schmidt)
J. J. Johnson, Kai Winding – trombone
Herbie Hancock – piano (02, 06)
Ross Tompkins – piano, electric piano, harpsichord (01, 04, 08, 09)
Eric Gale (02, 05, 06), Bucky Pizzarelli (01, 04, 08, 09) – guitar
Ron Carter (02, 05, 06), Richard Davis (01, 04, 08, 09) – bass
Grady Tate – drums (except 03 and 07)
Bernie Glow – trumpet, flugelhorn (01, 04, 08, 09)
Phil Bodner, George Marge, Romeo Penque – flute, oboe, clarinet (01, 04, 08, 09)
Walter Kane, Frank Schwartz – bassoon (01, 04, 08, 09)
Lewis Eley, Leo Kruczek, Eugene Orloff, Tosha Samaroff – violin (01, 04, 08, 09)
Charles Libove, David Nadien – violin (03, 07)
Al Brown – viola (01, 03, 04, 07-09)
George Ricci – cello (01, 03, 04, 07-09)
Eugene Bianco – harp (01, 04, 08, 09)
Produced by Creed Taylor
Arranged by Don Sebesky (01, 03, 04, 08, 09), J. J. Johnson (02, 06, 07) and Kai Winding (05)
Originally Issued as A&M SP 3008
Recorded on February 19 (05, 06), March 4 (02), March 12 (03, 07) and April 16 (01, 04, 08, 09), 1968, at Van Gelder Studios, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
01 published by Chappell-Co., Inc./Williamson Music Co. (ASCAP)
02 published by Beechwood Music Corporation (BMI)
03 published by Primary Wave Tunes (BMI)
04 published by Warner Bros., Inc./Stephen Ballentine Music Publ. Co.-Chappell-Co., Inc.-Ray Henderson Music Co., Inc. (ASCAP)
05 published by Universal Music Careers/Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp. (BMI)
06 published by Cahn Music Company/Producers Music Publishing Co., Inc. (ASCAP)
07 published by EMI Mills Music Inc. (ASCAP)
08 published by M. J. Q. Music Inc. (BMI)
09 published by Chappell-Co., Inc. (ASCAP)
(P) 1968
Israel reunited the popular trombonists Kai Winding (1922-83) and J.J. Johnson (1924-2001) for the first time since 1960, when the pair waxed their Creed Taylor-produced Impulse date The Great Kai & J.J. Both Kai and J.J. were already hard bop pioneers in 1954 when their first match-up on records proved surprisingly popular. In 1955, Creed Taylor produced one of their finest outings, K + J.J. (a.k.a. “Nuf Said”) (Bethlehem), before the trombone twosome went on to wax a string of successful albums for Columbia. After their Impulse date, each went his separate way. Johnson became a staff arranger and composer for MEA Music while Winding formed a production company for TV commercial jingles and served as musical director for the New York City Playboy Club.1 Each continued recording, with J.J. Johnson doing session work and solo dates for Verve, Impulse and RCA. Kai Winding followed Creed Taylor to Verve, where the two produced a number of fine albums and singles, highlighted by the 1963 hit “More,” Riz Ortolani’s insidious theme to the Italian film Mondo Cane.
Released in June 1968, Israel is an uneasy mix of the overly baroque (“My Funny Valentine,” “Django”), ersatz third-streamers (“Catherine’s Theme,” “St. James Infirmary”), nostalgic oddities (“Am I Blue/Sonnyboy,” “Try to Remember”) and Wes-like pop jazz (“Never My Love,” “Saturday Night”). The album’s title song is a natural for K. and J.J., and it’s the sort of thing one might wish there was a bit more of here. The song was written in 1948 by trumpeter Johnny Carisi to celebrate the birth of the State of Israel that year. It was immortalized by Miles Davis on the Birth of the Cool in 1949. “J.J. Johnson was on the date,” Ira Gitler points out in this album’s liner notes, “replacing the group’s original trombonist – Kai Winding.” The hard-bop pioneers bring the jazz standard into the next generation with this cooler take on Carisi’s ode. Especially notable here are Herbie Hancock – who solos magnificently – and Ron Carter, both suggesting how the tune might sound if Miles himself had revisited it in 1968.
The Association’s gorgeous 1967 hit “Never My Love,” rhythmically charged here by Eric Gale, and “Saturday Night,” a 1945 hit for Frank Sinatra, allowing a playful Hancock a bit of fun, suggest yet another approach this album might have better pursued, with K. and J.J. bringing back their mutual magic2 on somewhat more contemporary fare. The baroque pieces simply seem ill-advised, while Francis Lai’s “Catherine’s Theme” (from the 1967 film Live for Life, there as “Theme to Catherine”) receives an especially odd treatment, pairing Sebesky’s pizzicato strings with Winding’s muted musings and Johnson’s terpsichorean lyricism. Similar in its strangeness is the strings-and-bones “un-jazz” of “St. James Infirmary,” more a piece of avant-garde exotica than what Louis Armstrong made famous in 1928.
DownBeat’s one-star review of Israel huffs that “[t]his isn’t a jazz album” at all. “The star,” says reviewer Alan Heineman, “is for a nice, light, chords-between-beats solo by Hancock on ‘Israel,’ and for the occasionally intrepid attempts by Johnson to transcend the quagmire of schmaltzy, precious arrangements – to which he and Winding contributed, though the villain of the piece is Don Sebesky.”3 Such an overly harsh verdict is difficult, however, to dispute. Even though tastes were changing, and jazz folk were trying to somehow improve their aim (or simply stick to their guns), Israel wasn’t a good day for anyone.
While Creed Taylor, as ever, remained the perfect purveyor of musical support, his astute programming skills faltered on Israel. The mad mix of tunes clashed as much as the unusual treatments so many of them received. Don Sebesky would hone his baroque skills much more effectively for Wes Montgomery’s Road Song, and his string work would become much more tempered and refined soon hereafter. For their part, J.J. Johnson – who was named #1 Jazz Trombonist in the 33rd Annual DownBeat Reader’s Poll in 1968 – and Kai Winding seemed more determined to figure out how to better reach jazz listeners of the late 1960s with their next two albums. Not surprisingly, Israel found neither the audience the duo’s previous records had nor the respect their older Creed Taylor productions did.
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