A newly restored live album presents Brother Jack McDuff at his best
Live At Parnell’s, originally recorded in June 1982 was released by Soul Bank Music on September 2 this year. Across two CDs, or three LPs, McDuff and his band play for two hours without intermission.
The lineup for this session is Jack McDuff on organ with an unknown trio on sax, guitar, and drums. More on his bandmates later, but regardless of who it is, the sax really stood out for me. As I noted in our feature on Jack McDuff, although McDuff is the band leader, he is quite happy to let his organ sit in the background and doesn’t force the audience’s attention towards him. Thankfully, that’s what make his albums and this live session so interesting, everyone in the band has their moment to shine and doesn’t have to wait for their solos to do it (but you get those too, like the fantastic drum solo on Killer Joe).
So why did it take 40 years for this album to come out? Well, it wouldn’t be the first “lost” jazz session released recently, but this was different. These recordings have been passed around amongst fans for years as bootlegs, but they suffered from sound quality issues which have only recently been bypassed thanks to advancements in audio restoration techniques.
Originally recorded onto C60 cassettes in June 1982 by “Organ Freak” Scott Hawthorn, the resident sound engineer at Parnell’s, a jazz club in Seattle. These were made available as MP3s in the 90s as music fans began to share their recordings online. The 128 kbps MP3 files were heard by Soul Bank Music A&R Greg Boraman who more recently played them to his friend Claudio Passavanti, founder of audio production company Dr Mix. Passavanti felt they might actually be able improve the recordings using the latest audio restoration technology.
To do this, they used iZotope’s RX9 software which is used for removing unwanted noise, and isolating others. It was used to help restore Orson Welle’s final film The Other Side of the Wind, and Peter Jackson’s recent Get Back film used similar techniques to isolate The Beatles dialogue in ways not possible in 1970.
The problem here wasn’t just that the Jack McDuff recordings were made on cassette, but McDuff’s Leslie speaker was damaged at the time leading to some issues when he hit low notes, as Scott Hawthorn explained.
“Jack’s Leslie 147 speaker cabinet had a rip in the bass woofer. The thing sounded fine until he would step on a Bb or A bass pedal and then a very loud ‘buzzzzz’ ensued, Jack ignored it and played the hell out of the pedals anyway,” Hawthorn said.
Greg Boraman described the remastering process as long and painstaking as they worked on removing and isolating some of the buzz from the recordings. “I made copious, detailed notes of where and how severe the various audio issues were, and Claudio began the slow process of going through the recordings second by second, removing individual noises and faults one by one,” he said.
“These, originally being old analogue live recordings, a great deal of attention also went on carefully removing some of the background hiss and other artefacts, but without driving the software too hard and deadening the overall sound of the performances: then checking and thus re-adjusting once more.”
The results were mastered for CD and digital formats by Claudio Passavanti, and then additionally mastered for vinyl by Frank Merritt from The Carvery.
I was able to track down the original MP3’s to do a proper comparison between the original and remaster, and while listening to one version after the other it’s easy to feel both have charm. But when I lined up two versions of the same song and switched back and forth between them as they played, it becomes clearer how much work has been done. Not only is the remaster louder, but it has greater bass so it doesn’t sound as thin as the original cassette, not to mention the tape hiss has been removed too allowing you to focus more on the music than the artefacts of how these were recorded.
It’s easy to nitpick when going back and forth between an original (which realistically most people won’t have heard) and a remaster which is out there available for everyone to hear right now. So how does this sound as an album?
Well, it sounds great. If you listen with headphones you can hear some occasional hiccups, but nothing as bad as the original cassette, and knowing it was remastered from a cassette makes it hard to fault.
When I previously wrote about Jack McDuff’s life I listened to a lot of his albums. They kind of lose their focus in the 70s and 80s, with McDuff dropping his classic B-3 organ in favour of a synth. It was probably more portable, but it made some of his albums sound pretty dated to our modern ears. None of that is apparent in these recordings though, with McDuff on his B-3 again and his quartet sounding as good and energetic as his classic albums from the 60s.
The songs here feature a fast paced and thrilling sax which really shines on Satin Doll, a highlight for me, while there’s a great guitar solo on Take The A Train too. Each of the band have their time to shine across the set, and while things occasionally get a bit laid back and cruisey on tracks like Deja Vu, it’s a taste of the many sides of Jack McDuff and his band rather than a detriment.
There’s just under two hours of music here, cut down from 23 tracks originally recorded over three cassette tapes. Understandably not everything could be included, and some songs on the original tapes were just partial recordings or had severe sound issues so have been left off.
For this release there are still some imperfections present. Remnants from being recorded on cassette tape or the occasional buzz from the torn speaker when McDuff hits those bass notes, but Greg Boraman is happy he was able to release these recordings so they can reach a wider audience 40 years after they were first recorded.
“All things considered, especially when compared to the recordings as they were, only the most cynical critic would say the end results were not worth the considerable effort,” he said.
As mentioned, these songs have previously been made available, but in low quality form as low bitrate MP3s or Real Media files. So with a much better sound and wider release, Live At Parnell’s is the definite version of these recordings.
But there’s still some question over who was playing on these recordings. The physical release state the lineup as Jack McDuff on organ, Danny Wollinski on sax, Henry Johnson on guitar, and Garrick King on drums. But after the original press releases were sent out and the CDs and LPs made, Greg Boraman was contacted by Henry Johnson who let him know that wasn’t him on guitar. Although he did play with Jack McDuff, in June 1982 he was on tour with Ramsey Lewis according to his tour diary.
Danny Wollinski likewise reached out after hearing the recordings to say that wasn’t him playing either. That leaves Garrick King on drums as the last unknown.
Earlier this year, Greg Boraman discussed the lineup with organist Joey DeFrancesco when he played at Ronnie Scotts. DeFrancesco was friends with Jack McDuff, and the two organists recorded together several times. He told Boraman he was “99% certain it WAS Garrick King on drums” as he knew his playing well.
For his part, Scott Hawthorn had tried to confirm the lineup too, and he’d even asked Jack McDuff. But unfortunately he couldn’t remember who they were either and it’s been left a mystery.
All mention of the band apart from McDuff have since been removed from the digital editions, but Greg Boraman said he hopes to eventually discover who the sidemen actually were.
This also marks the first new music released by McDuff following his death in 2001. There have been several reissues in the past few years, especially of his 60s recordings for Prestige, so it’s a pleasure to hear Jack McDuff playing so well in the 80s and it will likely inspire others to dig out their old cassettes and consider how they could sound if Soul Bank Music and Dr Mix were to be involved.
Live At Parnell’s, is available from Soul Bank Music as two CDs, three LPs, or digitally.
