John Wright - Makin' Out + Interview with John!

John Wright - Makin' Out - Prestige PR 7212 - Original Prestige Pressing, Yellow Fireworks Label, Mono

John Wright - Piano
Eddy 'Cat Eye' Williams - Tenor Saxophone
Wendell Marshall - Bass
Roy Brooks - Drums

Recorded - June 23 1961, Rudy Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Supervision - Esmond Edwards
Recording - Rudy Van Gelder [RVG in deadwax]
Cover Photo/Design - Don Schlitten

Released - February 17, 1962

John Wright is my other personal favorite/cult artist on Prestige. John with his piano trio created a gentle and beautiful approach to soul jazz in the early 1960s that while reflecting then contemporary jazz currents - was also something intensely Chicago-centric. Listening to John you are transported to a Chicago of the early 60s - a great and vital jazz town with a local music scene to rival the New York and the West Coast. A distinct blues, and gospel influence underpins John's playing: his sides may sound ever so 'slight' and 'pleasant' at first listen - but they slowly grow on you. John is considered the great obscure soul jazz artist: he achieved some modest success when he was active, but all of his recordings today remain out of print and only a select few ever made it to CD. However, to become a fan of John is to enter a rarefied secret club of soul jazz connoisseurs who love and appreciate John's work, spend excessive amounts on ebay searching out his original Prestige pressings, and evangelize to their fellow jazzheads about this true soul jazz legend.

This particular side, "Makin Out' is one of John's strongest - his only recording with horns as a quartet with great compositions and inventive playing. It's incredibly difficult to secure a good copy - this is a rather recent acquisition for under $20 which comes from my personal collection. It's not in great shape (VG -, slight skips ) but it's worth a listen. Part of why John remains so rather unappreciated (you won't find his name in any of those conventional jazz histories, either) is that his recording career remains rather brief and short lived. After recording five Prestige sides from August 1960 to April 1962, John essentially dropped off the jazz radar, only surfacing to record as a leader for a local Chicago label in 1994. I've always wondered - what ever happened to John? What explains his absence from recorded jazz for almost three decades?

Some perspective: I've struggled lately to inject some life and originality into my blog/jazz vinyl collecting hobby. Accumulating old LP sides as an 'investment'/blue note fetishism is boring and unfulfilling- who cares? That's the surest way to irrelevancy, and the music dies... My restlessness hence drove the recent foray into Prestige's folk and ethnic recordings which just concluded. However, isn't there something more substantial that I can do than to collect for the sake of filling out missing LP numbers? How about actually accumulating some real knowledge through good original reporting or connecting to the artists- remaining living legends themselves?

So I decided rather impulsively to use the training that I received from a year in journalism school to track down John Wright and ask him my questions directly. From rather cursory internet and library research, I was able to trace John to Chicago. With the help of the Hyde Park Jazz Society, and some local Chicago jazz luminaries , I was able to obtain John's number and I called him last week! John's wonderful wife, Jean answered the phone, and then after I introduced myself as a jazz blogger/fan of John's work, she called John and put him on the speakerphone. Just like that I was speaking personally with one of my jazz heroes!

John was very modest and quite friendly, fortunately very eager to reminiscence and speak about his career in jazz. He's still going strong at 78(!), but he's been less active lately due to some lingering health problems. Fortunately John remembered all his recordings quite well, but doesn't own the original vinyl. He seemed rather bemused when I told him originals sell for big bucks on ebay! He finally saw an original when his granddaughter bought "South Side Soul" off ebay. I don't have the time now to transcribe my three interviews with John about his life in jazz at the moment - so I'll present some interview highlights in short narrative form:

"John Wright was born in 1934 in Louisville, Kentucky and came to Chicago with his family when he was 2. He is an untrained musician with no formal training. He was first introduced to music at the age of 3, picking out melodies at the piano. At the age of 7, he started playing the piano at his mother's Penecotal Church. At the age of 13, he became an organist at a Baptist Church in Chicago. Most interestingly, he came to jazz rather late- he was first introduced to jazz when he joined the United States Military in 1952. It was here, in Europe, while playing for Special Services, that he first started to play jazz - some of his contemporaries and close friends in the service included most prominently, Walter Dickerson (vibes), Chartis Otis (drums), & Lou Blackburn (trumbone), (only names you'd recognize according to John) ... He also singled out Errol Garner as an especially a major influence on his playing. After service he returned to Chicago, started to find gigs as a bassist & pianist and worked with a group known as The Four Whims for 5 years in downtown Chicago.

It was here in Chicago sometime in 1959 that John was introduced to Prestige Records, A&R man, Esmond Edwards at a show. To John's utter delight and surprise, Esmond offered John a chance to record. "You mean I had the chance to come to New York, and even record with my own trio; (which included Wendell "Corky" Roberts (bass) & Walter McCant (drums), both deceased - I was in heaven", John remarked. In speaking with John, I'd most hoped he could shed light on how Prestige worked as a recording company, and also to get John's specific memories of recording his sides. Generally, John was able to confirm general details of the 'Prestige method'. Esmond Edwards initiated and booked all the recording sessions. John also quite clearly remembers Rudy Van Gelder arranging mike placement and sitting in the booth. There was no preparation and rehearsal for each recording session. John told me: "No preparation... they just told me to play!". Everything was improvised, even the originals. Gradually after recording a few dates, John learned what was expected in terms of the Prestige house style: "a slow one, a fast one, a blues one, a soul one etc". That was the extent of the preparation and listening almost fifty years later, John was not entirely happy about the recordings: "I can pick out my mistakes!".

However, in terms of more specific memories of recording each side, John could not recall much, unfortunately. John's most vivid memories of his recordings are of those who he played with: Wendell (Corky) Roberts (bass), Walter (Butch) McCants (drums) of his working trio, but also J.C Heard (drums), Eddy "Cat Eye" Williams (sax), Roy Brooks (drums), Gene Taylor (bass), Wendell Marshall (bass), and Walter Perkins (drums). John spoke quite favorably of 'South Side Soul" and "Makin' Out" in general terms. According to John, "South Side Soul" was an explicit attempt to capture specific moods/feelings of Chicago by linking each cut to a specific street location/place in Chicago. John in our first conversation brought up 'Makin Out' on his own. He liked this side because it was his first and only recording with horns: "But I didn't know how to really play with horns then, so I just started to comp behind Eddy Williams" said John. I asked John about what ever happened to 'Cat Eye' who hardly ever recorded? "Shortly after recording, he disappeared", replied John. John then elaborated: "Yes, he disappeared we assume he passed, we went to various radio stations asking about "Cat Eye"...could never track him down". Finally, I asked a rather silly question - who is Mr. Soul? "That's John Wright, Esmond Edwards gave that nickname to me!", John laughed.

Our conversations then turned to a topic I was particularly interested in: Why did he stop recording after Mr. Soul in April 1962?. John was very direct about this: "[Prestige owner] Bob Weinstock blackballed me [after 1962], told me I couldn't tour or record anymore for Prestige". Startled, I asked John for more information, and I started to piece together a narrative. Essentially sometime between December 1961 and April 1962, John had a direct confrontation/falling out with Weinstock. John was then based in New York and had become friendly with other musicians - knew and met Miles Davis, Jack McDuff, Willis Jackson & others - and found out they were given large sums of money & homes and he was left out of the mix! Feeling justifiably aggrieved, John angrily confronted Weinstock and asked for more money."I told him [Weinstock] you can take this record and shove it up your A..."! Weinstock eventually terminated John and blackballed him from recording again.

John, almost fifty years later is rather reflective of the whole Weinstock episode. He displays no bitterness towards Weinstock despite this singular injustice. "I was young and naive, in my early 20s then, I didn't know anything about the record business... I regret what I did". I pressed John about the mechanics of his contract, his royalties, songwriting credits and received some enlightening answers. John in fact doesn't even recall signing a contract! He also had songwriting credits stolen from him - despite the liner notes - all the originals not credited to John on each one of his sides are solely his compositions. For instance, "La Salle Street After Hours' is credited to John's then agent, local Chicago promoter Armond J Jackson - this is false as this is John's composition 100%. It was more even depressing to hear about the state of John's royalties. According to John, he has not received any payment for his work since 1967! "South Side Soul" and "Mr Soul" were reissued by Fantasy/OJC label on CD in the early 90s - but clearly John has not benefited at all from this revived interest in his work from jazz fans/collectors.

So, what happened to John after he was blackballed in 1962? "Real life, I had a family, and I had to pay a mortgage! " John returned to Chicago, broke up his working trio, joined a new trio occasionally recorded, mostly uncredited as a supporting player on several recordings. However, during the decade of the 70's, & 80's, John start playing with the Oscar Lindsey trio in and around the Chicagoland area. He struggled with alcoholism for a time, had a complicated personal life (4 wives in succession and 9 children) before getting regular work first as a political operative/Chicago precinct captain for the local Democratic Party on the south side of Chicago. A local political scandal ended John's brief political career. John eventually settled into a regular day job as a civil servant and administrator in the Cook County Corrections System (Chicago municipality], responsible for the jail's library and commissary. John was beloved here - known as 'poppy' and the "jazz pianist" and the library in the jail (The Clarence Darrow Library - Reference Section, Division 5) is now named in his honor; The John "poppy" Wright Library.

Jazz remained important for John. On weekly basis, John performed with his group (The John Wright Quartet) from 1975-2009, at a local restaurant known as Philander's at the Carlton Hotel in Oak Park, IL. After retirement from the Cook County Corrections System in 1999, John has been spending his time recording, Feeling II and a Christmas CD, The Wright Way, also, playing locally in and around the Chicagoland area. He occasionally appeared at Sunday night events of the James Wagner Hyde Park Jazz Society where he is an Executive Director - and has also played Chicago's annual Labor Day Jazz Festival and many more festivals in the Chicagoland area. As a 78 year old - health remains a concern for John. Due to diabetes/glaucoma in 2004 - John lost his sight but he continued to play. He was a candidate for an eye transplant to restore his sight last year - but problems with John's heart caused him to undergo open heart surgery in September 2011. John is still recovering from this surgery these days, not as active as he should be according to his wife Jean. He's unable to play at the moment, but hopes to return to gigging later this year when he feels stronger then."