Jazz In Transition
Between 1955–57 Transition Records released 15 albums, including early records with Sun Ra, John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, and Donald Byrd. Each album had beautiful packaging, including booklets with information about the band, their songs, and Transition’s future releases. The label was unsustainable and closed after two years, but its founder Tom Wilson continued to work within the industry and produced albums for Bob Dylan, The Velvet Underground, and Frank Zappa. It’s these projects he is best known for now, but it started with Transition.
Born Thomas Blanchard Wilson Jr. on March 25, 1931 in Waco, Texas, Tom Wilson played trombone and attended jam sessions at his grandfather’s laundry as his early music education. After completing high school in Texas, Wilson attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee for one year before transferring to Harvard in Boston. At Harvard, Wilson studied economics while still finding time to follow his music pursuits, starting the Harvard New Jazz Society in 1953.
“I was president of the jazz society there, and began to meet some of the musicians,” Wilson told Melody Maker in 1967. “We sponsored one of Dave Brubeck’s earliest concerts, I did interviews with Charlie Parker and others, and we recorded Herb Pomeroy, Serge Chaloff and some more. We started to can programmes, and that’s where I learned radio and recording techniques.”
Back in 1953, Wilson explained his plans for the Jazz Society were to foster appreciation for jazz music at Harvard, focusing attention on “all that’s good in jazz, not only bop or progressive.” Alongside running a series of lectures on jazz history, Wilson also worked at the college radio station WHRB as pop music director.
After graduating in 1954, Wilson borrowed what has been reported as either $500 or $900, which he used to start Transition Records, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The new company was officially founded March 1955 as Transition Tapes, Inc., with Wilson joined by fellow Harvard alumni, Wells Whitney as treasurer and Steven Greysner as business manager.
Perhaps as explanation for the labels long name, Wilson told The Harvard Crimson at the time, “Although we will concentrate on producing LP records during the next 18 months, most of our music will thereafter be issued on tapes”.
“We plan to specialize in folk songs, jazz, and American classical music…One of our main objectives is to record neglected American compositions which we feel deserve recognition.”
Transition’s first release was Jazz In A Stable, released November 1, 1955. Led by trumpetist Herb Pomeroy, the album was recorded with the house band at Boston’s music club The Stable and was praised by jazz magazine Down Beat upon its release, who wrote “the musicianship is of a very high level. Pomeroy indicates again that he is one of the best young trumpeters in the country…Collectively, the unit swings and has good ensemble integration…The set is thoroughly recommended.”
The album was Pomeroy’s solo debut, and Transition released several more debuts in it’s first year. This included Sam Gary Sings, which remains blues-folk singer Sam Gary’s only solo album. Gary had been singing with Josh White for several years and was part of his Carolinians group who released the album Chain Gang in 1940. He also sang with Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, and appeared on Josh White’s solo debut Josh At Midnight (1956).
The booklet which accompanied Sam Gary Sings revealed a second album from Sam Gary was planned, titled Gary Sings The Gospel. This would have been part of a series of folk albums which Sam Gary Sings was the first. Albums by Odetta, Sonny Terry, Jo Mapes, Dean Laurence, PeteStein, and Raphael Boguslav were also teased for the series, but while several were given catalogue numbers, no further folk albums appeared on Transition.
Perhaps one of the reasons the folk series ended prematurely can be attributed to a quote from Wilson, when he spoke to Melody Maker in 1976. He explained he didn’t even like folk music, telling them, “I’d been recording Sun Ra and Coltrane, and I thought folk music was for the dumb guys.” He would later change his mind after hearing Bob Dylan, who he recorded with beginning in 1964.
Before Transition become focused strictly on jazz, in their first year an album by Lovey Powell was released as part of a new “mood” series. But like Sam Gary’s folk album, this would be the only release in its respective series, and a planned classical series was also put on hold, with only one album eventually releasing later in 1957.
In the label’s second year, Transition released five albums, with each receiving strong reviews, earning the new label many fans. But Transition wasn’t without criticism, and Down Beat took them to task over poor audio quality on several of their early releases, noting they didn’t compare well to the expected hi-fi standard set by Blue Note.
These early Transition albums were recorded in what the label called “Live Concert Fidelity”, which they explained as follows:
“We at Transition believe that the best jazz results from an optimum combination of musicianly skills and enthusiastic audience response. Each recording is made under the most authentic conditions: in the jazz club, at jazz concerts, or in the studio with a live audience in attendance. Few retakes are made, even at studio sessions, in order to preserve the freshness and spontaneity of the jazz improvisations”
Down Beat was unmoved, and in their review of John Windhurst’s Jazz At Columbus Ave. (1956) they wrote, “It’s about time Transition did something about its engineering…In today’s market there is no excuse for this kind of production sloppiness…with an over-all thinness of sound,insufficient presence for trumpeter Windhurst, and a rhythm section that sounds, to borrow a phrase from General Mike Levin, as if it had been recorded on fudge.”
Audio quality aside, Tom Wilson and Transition recorded several important debuts, including Sun Ra. Recorded in Chicago in July 1956, Transition released Jazz by Sun Ra, Vol. 1 in 1957, and a Swedish pressing was released by Sonet as Tom Wilson expanded internationally.
In November 1956 Transition announced several deals for their albums to be released around the world. These included further releases on Sonet, including three songs from Donald Byrd’s Byrd’s Eye View released across two singles, with the 12 minute Doug’s Blues split across two sides. But more importantly, the deal also announced albums from Esquire Records in the UK and Vogue in France would be released on Transition.
Esquire releases by Scottish saxophonist Tommy Whittle, English multi-instrumentalist Victor Feldman, and the Keith Christie Quartet were announced for Transition. As was an album from Vogue featuring American saxophonist Lucky Thompson. Although the Esquire albums remained unreleased, Thompson’s Lucky Strikes! was released by Transition in 1957, and later some of Transition’s albums by Sam Gary, Herb Pomeroy, and Donald Byrd appeared on Esquire in the UK.
But for everything Transition did release, it seems there was always more which remained unreleased.
Tom Wilson recorded an early session by Pepper Adams featuring John Coltrane in 1955, with one song Train’s Strain appearing on Jazz in Transition, a 1956 compilation of offcuts from the label’s artists to date. Unfortunately, the song is said to have been so poorly reviewed a planned album was scrapped, and these sessions weren’t heard for almost 20 years. Thankafully, they were eventually released on High Step (1975), a collaborative album from Paul Chambers and John Coltrane released on Blue Note, and were also added to Blue Note’s later reissues of Chambers’ Music: A Jazz Delegation From The East.
Blue Note would also release a February 1957 session by Louis Smith featuring Julian “Cannonball” Adderley which had been intended for Transition. It was released in 1958 as Here Comes Louis Smith.
The reason these sessions found a new home was because Transition closed in 1957. The label had announced plans to release an album by singer Sheila Jordan at the end of 1956, and even announced Joe Gordon had signed with them in May 1957, but nothing from these planned sessions was ever released.
Other unreleased session included albums by Jay Migliori, Yusef Lateef, and Dave Coleman, some of which may not have been recorded. A Charles Mingus live recording from his appearance at Newport, Rhode Island in 1955 was also said to be planned for release by Transition, but wasn’t secured, and remains unreleased.
While sales were never great, the label was recognised as having one of the best jazz catalogues of the time, and when Transition closed in 1957 Blue Note Records picked up most of their catalogue, including the aforementioned Louis Smith debut.
Later in 1961, Delmark announced they had acquired and planned to reissue the Transition masters of Sun Ra, Johnny Windhurst, Donald Byrd and Yusef Lateef. Delmark reissued the Byrd-Lateef sessions as Yusef in 1965, and reissued Sun Ra’s debut as Sun Song in 1967. The label also releasedSun Ra’s Sound of Joy in 1968, which had also originally been recorded for Transition in December 1956, as the follow up to his debut.
Following the closure of Transition, Tom Wilson spent the next several years hopping between record labels, where he worked with jazz, folk, and pop acts.
In 1958 Wilson joined United Artists as part of the A&R staff in charge of producing jazz albums. Then in 1960 he left to manage a new all-jazz operation on WNCN-FM in New York. Wilson also produced a weekly half-hour radio programme for the station, but left later that year and joined Savoy Records where he recorded another Sun Ra album.
In 1962 he moved to Audio Fidelity Recordings, where he announced plans for a radical development of stereo music, and founded their Dauntless sublabel. One of the interesting releases Wilson took part in was Stereo Spectacular Demonstration & Sound Effects (1962). The album features a script written by Wilson, and includes stereo demonstrations of sound effects sweeping across the left and right speakers. In one demonstration two men play Russian roulette, passing a pistol back and forth until one loses. It manages to end on a humorous note all the same.
Wilson then moved to Columbia in 1963 where he famously recorded Bob Dylan and helped him go electric, before he joined MGM in 1965. It was here he produced the first two Velvet Underground albums, and also began hosting a new hour-long radio show called Music Factory. Sponsored by MGM, Music Factory was a promotional tool for the label where Wilson would interview MGM artists and play their music. But he also played Herbie Hancock and Bob Dylan records, including Like A Rolling Stone, which he had produced.
Wilson hosted 25 of the episodes, which premiered on WABC-FM in New York, and were also aired on over 100 college stations. Photos exist of Nico visiting the Music Factory studio on June 21, 1967, where she is said to be promoting her debut album Chelsea Girl, which Wilson produced. But while the photo did appear in Billboard, the episode doesn’t appear among the others which have been collected by fans.
In 1967 Tom Wilson moved again and resigned from his A&R position at MGM to form Rasputin Productions, which produced records independently for ABC Records and MGM. Wilson then formed the Tom Wilson Organization in 1968, a talent agency and recording office. In an extended feature on Tom Wilson for The New York Times Magazine’s September 29, 1968 issue, Wilson explained his motivations.
“You know why I went independent? Because I got tired of making millions of dollars for a millionaire who didn’t even send me a Christmas card…[I work hard] so that I can sit back in my old age in my stuffed leather chair”.
During the 1970s Wilson produced albums for several different labels, but the artists he worked with had become less high-profile. Instead, he focused on up-and-coming young acts who he hoped would be the next big thing, like The Fraternity of Man, and The Bagatelle. Neither were particularly successful, but he did have some success with Gil Scott-Heron.
It’s Your World, a 1976 album from Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson was produced by Wilson and reach #168 in the Billboard Top 200. It wasn’t as high an achievement as some of the albums Wilson produced during the 1960s, nor was it as good as Scott-Heron & Jackson’s The First Minute Of A New Day which reached #30 in 1975. But it was still an album that people would appreciate and remember.
The duo’s follow up Bridges released in 1977 and was co-produced by Wilson. It reached #130 in the Billboard Top 200 and became one of the final albums Tom Wilson worked on as he died from a heart attack on September 6, 1978.
At the time he had been developing an opera Mind Flyers Of Gondwana which he hoped would star Gil Scott-Heron, Gladys Knight, and The Righteous Brothers, with music by Bob Marley. It remains unproduced.
Although Transition was only short lived, Tom Wilson and his label have continued to gain fans. Working with so many successful artists from jazz, rock, and pop, means his work is always being rediscovered, and much of the Transition catalogue has been reissued by Blue Note.
Currently, Tom Wilson is the subject of a documentary film and biopic, both due for release in 2022. The documentary is directed by Marshall Crenshaw and was due some time ago, but has been delayed due to the ongoing pandemic. The biopic was only announced in 2021 with Wilson’s son, Tom Wilson III, producing. Neither have set definite release dates, but for those interested you’ll be sure to hear more about Tom Wilson soon. •
For updates on Tom Wilson and related projects see Irwin Chusid’s website producertomwilson.com
This article was originally published in The Shadow Knows Issue #2, December 2021. Buy the fanzine here or read more at our website.
