John Jenkins
Young Jenkins: 1957 Quintet Sessions
(Fresh Sound FSR CD931)

A STRANGE jazz life was that of the alto saxophonist John Jenkins. Born in Chicago in 1931 he went to Du Sable High School, which had an extraordinary music teacher called Captain Walter Dyett who tutored some of the most powerful saxophonists of the post-bop epoch, including Johnny Griffin, Sun Ra’s great tenor horn John Gilmore and Clifford Jordan.

[[{"fid":"1684","view_mode":"inlineright","fields":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false},"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false}},"link_text":null,"attributes":{"class":"media-element file-inlineright","data-delta":"1"}}]]Much influenced by the Charlie Parker sound and Parker’s disciples Jackie McLean and Sonny Still, Jenkins gigged for several years around Chicago before moving to New York in March 1957 where he very soon found himself playing in the Mingus band.

Within a few months he had been picked up by major jazz record producers at Prestige, Savoy and Blue Note labels and two of the albums that he made are featured on this Fresh Sound reissue, Young Jenkins.

His virtual disappearance from the New York jazz scene was almost as sudden as his ascent and by 1962 he had bade the life farewell, working as a messenger in Manhattan and a stallholder in street markets, only reappearing as a busker in the late ’80s and briefly reconnecting with Jordan before his death in 1993.

And yet these 1957 albums give ample testimony of his fiery talent and musical skill.

The first was a Prestige New Jazz album in July with Jordan, pianist Bobby Timmons, who played on some of the greatest albums of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, the booming Chicago bassist Wilbur Ware and Mingus’s favourite drummer, Dannie Richmond.

Off they go with a Jordan composition, Cliff Edge, with the two horns in unison before Jordan’s terse-toned chorus grips the quintet and Ware’s earthy bass holds it all together.

Jenkins’s keen alto shapes more pliable phrases until Timmons’s soulful notes come loping in.

The ballad Tenderly shows Jordan’s more tranquil side before Ware digs deep in his solo and Jenkins’s alto almost sings as you hear the words in his soft tones.

Princess is a cheerful Jenkins tune and the writer takes the first solo, imbued with sunshine and optimism which seems to affect Jordan as he comes sauntering in, full of fluency and a sense of hope. Timmons’s keys skip into his chorus.

It was trombonist Julian Priester who wrote the very lively Soft Talk heralded by a Richmond roll.

Jenkins’s effusive solo almost leaves the ground and levitates as he spins out his patterns of sound and a much more gruff Jordan keeps up the almost hectic pace until Jenkins comes back for more.

Blue Jay, another Jenkins opus, is the final track, begun by a succession of deep, deep notes from Ware before Jenkins lays bare the lyricism of his horn and offers citations from English Country Garden, from Rudy Van Gelder’s famous studio in Hackensack New Jersey. Jordan is beautifully eloquent and Timmons adds his gospelly notes while Ware’s bass walks beside him.

It’s the end of a fine session and Captain Dyett would have been proud of his two boys.

A month later and Jenkins was back in the same studio recording for Blue Note.

This time there was still Richmond, but Sonny Clark was the pianist, the bassist was Paul Chambers of Pittsburgh and the featured guitarist the young Kenny Burrell of Detroit.

They swing niftily into Cole Porter’s From This Moment On with Jenkins in full radiant fettle and Burrell strumming an interval.
Clark plays a punchy chorus and Burrell’s fleet fingers pick out a very rapid solo.

Jenkins’s first composition is Motif, which his horn explores with a full assurance, Burrell follows, ever-inventive, sparking Clark to formulate a bluesy theme before Chambers’s dancing bass marks out its way.

Everything I Have Is Yours is blown with full balladic beauty by Jenkins as if it were the last dance and Burrell’s incisively gentle notes add to the serenity.

Sharon is another Jenkins tune and its open, groovy theme gives Burrell in particular a foundation for some brilliant lines of invention.

The album’s final track is Burrell’s Blues for Two, a pacy theme with all members excelling. As it ends and you hear the urban Chicago sound of his blues-baked timbre, you wonder about the life and talent of the mysterious Jenkins and why that one single year of exposure in the jazz centre of the world didn’t launch him into a life of music.

Who knows? At least we have this brilliant recorded legacy to remember and celebrate him.

Chris Searle on Jazz appears every Tuesday in the paper edition of the Morning Star.