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CTI Records: Ten Tasty Albums With No Added Sugar (Almost)
Something that backfired on me is being responsible in a very odd way for smooth jazz, that nonentity of floating backgrounds. But I had no intention whatsoever of producing background music. The fundamental thing, always, whatever idiom of music we recorded, was to go for a groove.
—Creed Taylor
Creed Taylor
producer1929 - 2022
Taylor cut his teeth in the record business in the 1950s, first with the independent Bethlehem, then with ABC-Paramount, gaining a reputation as a marketing-savvy producer. In 1960, he persuaded ABC to launch Impulse! with himself as producer/artistic director. Among his first signings was
John Coltrane
saxophone1926 - 1967
In any event, by the time Africa/Brass was released, Taylor had left Impulse!, crossing Broadway to accept a lucrative offer as head of Verve, where with
Stan Getz
saxophone, tenor1927 - 1991
Taylor launched CTI in 1967 under the umbrella of A&M, who handled its sales and distribution, and took it fully independent in 1970. After expanding too far, too fast, Taylor was obliged to keep the label afloat with a $600,000 loan from Columbia. In 1978, unable to make the repayments, he declared the company bankrupt. Columbia acquired the catalogue under the terms of the loan agreement.
In a 2005 interview, Taylor reflected on the arguments his CTI productions caused and continue to cause. "Something that backfired on me is being responsible in a very odd way for smooth jazz, that kind of nonentity of floating backgrounds," said Taylor. "But I had no intention whatsoever to produce background music for beautiful people purposes."
Taylor went on to say that for him the CTI signature was rhythmic. "The fundamental thing, always, whatever idiom of music we recorded, was to go for a groove. We might keep the rhythm section playing for an hour on the same twelve bars. When it begins to sound like it's just about to lock in, then you start to record... You need a swinging foundation on which to put the improvisation. It's like batting practice and pitching warm-ups before a baseball game. Then you come out and perform. I don't see any difference. Of course, you have to start off with a good song."
With one exception, this list of Top Ten CTI albums avoids the label's more softly cushioned productions. It starts with an album which is among hard bop's most enduring late-period releases.
CTI RECORDS: TEN ALBUMS THAT EVERYONE SHOULD HEAR
Freddie Hubbard Red Clay
1970
Ten years after his sensational Blue Note debut album, Open Sesame (1960), and almost forty years before his swansong, Red Clay is trumpeter
Freddie Hubbard
trumpet1938 - 2008
After a string of top ranking Blue Note follow-ups during the first half of the 1960s, as jazz ceded ground to rock and soul as the decade continued, Hubbard looked to fusion to shore up his income. But his heart was not in it; he usually ended up sounding cheesy, and the viscerally exciting style with which he had made his name degenerated into clichés and histrionics. The decline began on Atlantic towards the end of the 1960s and accelerated during the 1970s, first on CTI, then on Columbia.
Red Clay, Hubbard's CTI debut, bucked the downward spiral. Hubbard's chops are still killer and the band is a monster:
Joe Henderson
saxophone1937 - 2001
Herbie Hancock
pianob.1940
Ron Carter
bassb.1937
Lenny White
drumsb.1949
By the early 1980s, Hubbard had little to show for his pursuit of mammon other than a Brobdingnagian cocaine habit and, as he was unable to disguise in press interviews, a quantity of self disgust. There was, however, something approaching a happy ending: Hubbard's final studio album, On The Real Side (Times Square, 2008), is a more than decent effort.
Joe Farrell Outback
1972
Saxophonist and flautist
Joe Farrell
saxophone1937 - 1986
Chick Corea
piano1941 - 2021
Buster Williams
bass, acousticb.1942
Elvin Jones
drums1927 - 2004
Airto Moreira
percussionb.1941
The musicians already knew each other. Farrell had appeared on three Jones albums, Puttin' It Together (1968), The Ultimate (1969) and Poly-Currents (1969), all on Blue Note. Farrell and Moreira had been founder members of Corea's
Return to Forever
band / ensemble / orchestraAgain like Red Clay, Outback consists of four tracks, the longest lasting 09:25 minutes, permitting well-crafted, evolving, ensemble passages and plenty of solo space (in this case, mainly from Farrell and Corea). The album opens with an ostinato-driven version of the theme tune from the movie Outback and showcases Farrell's flutes. It is followed by a soprano saxophone feature, the Farrell original "Sound Down," on which he tips his hat to John Coltrane on a section which shifts into waltz time and suggests "My Favourite Things." Farrell stays on soprano for Corea's Spanish-tinged "Bleeding Orchard" but essays a grittier, vocalised tone. The closer, the Farrell original "November 68th," has him on gutsy inside/outside tenor.
Chet Baker She Was Too Good To Me
1974
Warning! This album contains added sugar.
She Was Too Good To Me was billed as a comeback album, following the great but troubled trumpeter
Chet Baker
trumpet and vocals1929 - 1988
Incidentally, dental problems are also the reason the friendly-by-nature Baker is only ever shown giving a Mona Lisa-like half-smile in the image-building photos William Claxton shot during the early 1950s. He had already lost one front tooth. In his book Young Chet (Te Neues, 1993), Claxton says: "As long as I knew Chet he had one missing tooth in the front that made him look charming and dopey at the same time. And [he made sure that] the missing tooth never showed up in any of his pictures." (An exception is a 1953 photograph taken by a fan backstage at a Los Angeles club. Baker is shown standing next to
Miles Davis
trumpet1926 - 1991
Seven of the eight tracks on She Was Too Good To Me are from the Great American Songbook, with "Autumn Leaves" and "Tangerine" especially memorable. Alto saxophonist
Paul Desmond
saxophone, alto1924 - 1977
Hubert Laws
woodwindsb.1939
Hank Mobley
saxophone, tenor1930 - 1986
The album finds Baker well on the way to a return to form (though not a recovery from heroin addiction). His best recorded work of the 1970s, however, is arguably as a sideman with guitarist
Jim Hall
guitar1930 - 2013
Jim Hall Concierto
1975
Jim Hall's Concierto has arrangements by CTI house arranger
Don Sebesky
arranger1937 - 2023
Taylor's uncluttered production and Sebesky's understated arrangements play to Hall's elegance and lyricism. The album was made with a sextet: Paul Desmond on alto saxophone Chet Baker on trumpet,
Roland Hanna
piano1932 - 2002
Steve Gadd
drumsb.1945
Side one of the original LP consisted of Cole Porter's "You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To," Jane Hall's "The Answer Is Yes" and Hall's "Two's Blues." They are gorgeous. But it is side two that is Concierto's crowning glory: an adaptation of Joaquin Rodrigo's "Concierto De Aranjuez." Baker sounds totally unfazed by Miles Davis' historic performance on Sketches Of Spain (Columbia, 1960), and his melodicism is at its most elevated. Hall's ditto. Sebesky's loosely swinging charts are "jazzier" than
Gil Evans
composer / conductor1912 - 1988
Randy Weston Blue Moses
1972
Pianist and composer
Randy Weston
piano1926 - 2018
The album is not, as you might expect, a percussive, small group affair such as African Rhythms (Comet, 1970) or Spirit: The Power Of Music (Sunnyside, 2000). It is a big-band production featuring a brass-dominated 22-piece line-up arranged by Don Sebesky.
Sebesky's approach here is high decibel and borderline bombastic (early in his career he played trombone in
Stan Kenton
piano1911 - 1979
Melba Liston
trombone1926 - 1999
Grover Washington, Jr.
saxophone1943 - 1999
Enjoyably high octane, Blue Moses adds another dimension to Weston's output.
Antonio Carlos Jobim Stone Flower
1970
Creed Taylor's love affair with
Antonio Carlos Jobim
piano1927 - 1994
Stan Getz
saxophone, tenor1927 - 1991
Claus Ogerman
composer / conductor1930 - 2016
Among Taylor's first CTI productions was Jobim's Wave (1967), another collection of Jobim tunes framed by Ogerman's arrangements. Next up were 1970's Stone Flower and Tide, both with jazz-centric arrangements by fellow Brazilian Eumir Deodata. The vibe is in the main burnished and laid-back, the exception being
Hermeto Pascoal
fluteb.1936
The CTI Jobims may seem to fly in the face of the title of this article. But their lush aesthetic derives more from Jobim than Taylor. First generation Brazilian bossa nova was smooth long before that became a dirty word.
Bill Evans Montreux ll
1970
A memorable follow-up to pianist
Bill Evans
piano1929 - 1980
Eddie Gomez
bassb.1944
Jack DeJohnette
drumsb.1942
Evans worked from a relatively small songbook throughout his career and the material here is familiar fare. But he imbues it with the fresh, seraphic lyricism that he brought to practically every performance. There are three originals ("Very Early," "34 Skidoo" and "Peri's Scope"), two Great American Songbook standards (Earl Zindars' "How My Heart Sings" and Jack Baker's "I Hear A Rhapsody), and Burt Bacharach's "Alfie" and
John Carisi
trumpet1922 - 1992
None of Evans' trio albums top the masterpieces he recorded with bassist
Scott LaFaro
bass1936 - 1961
Paul Motian
drums1931 - 2011
Philly Joe Jones
drums1923 - 1985
George Benson Beyond The Blue Horizon
1971
Much of guitarist
George Benson
guitarb.1943
Joe Beck
guitar1945 - 2008
Wayne Shorter
saxophone1933 - 2023
In 1971, when Benson's CTI debut, Beyond The Blue Horizon, was recorded, his jazz chops were still match-ready and in full effect. The album is one of his best, possibly his very best, jazz outings. As Benson tells the tale in Benson: The Autobiography (Da Capo, 2014), this is partly because, having just taken CTI out from under A&M's wing and made it fully independent, Taylor "didn't have no money to put any sweetening on it, no strings or anything like that. [So] I thought, I'll just get some great cats, pick some great tunes, and play some great guitar."
Which he does. " data-original-title="" title="">Clarence M. Palmer keeps things soul-jazzish on the Hammond B3, while Ron Carter, on double bass, and Jack DeJohnette, on drums, maintain a relatively straight-ahead post-bop groove.
Michael Cameron
saxophoneb.1981
Luiz Bonfa
guitar, acoustic1922 - 2001
Ron Carter All Blues
1974
By the time Ron Carter left Miles Davis' band in 1968, he was one of jazz music's most in-demand session players and had been present on many hundreds of releases (his total in 2020 is in excess of 1,500). In Miles: The Autobiography (Simon & Schuster, 1989), Davis notes Carter's kvetching when the band's itinerary took it beyond easy reach of New York, where the bassist earned far more per week in the studios than he did on the road with Davis.
Carter was a regular sessionman on CTI from the get-go, when he played bass on the label's debut release,
Wes Montgomery
guitar1923 - 1968
Many of Carter's CTI albums are lightweight affairs, be they sideman or leader dates, but All Blues is a keeper. Aside from one track on which
Richard Tee
keyboards1943 - 1993
Roland Hanna
piano1932 - 2002
Billy Cobham
drumsb.1944
Milt Jackson Sunflower
1973
Overall, vibraphonist
Milt Jackson
vibraphone1923 - 1999
Ray Charles
piano and vocals1930 - 2004
Like Carter's All Blues, much of the success of Sunflower derives from its focus on the band rather than the leader. And what a band: Freddie Hubbard on trumpet and flugelhorn, Herbie Hancock on keyboards,
Jay Berliner
guitar, acousticConventional wisdom has it that, outside the disciplined context of the MJQ, Jackson was most effective letting his hair down with the blues. Certainly, his Atlantic albums confirm his mastery of that form. But Sunflower reminds us what a great ballad interpreter he was, too, with or outwith the MJQ.
Photo: Chet Baker
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Building a Jazz Library
Chris May
Creed Taylor
John Coltrane
Stan Getz
Freddie Hubbard
Joe Henderson
Herbie Hancock
Ron Carter
Lenny White
Joe Farrell
Chick Corea
Buster Williams
Elvin Jones
Airto Moreira
Return To Forever
Chet Baker
Miles Davis
Paul Desmond
Hubert Laws
Hank Mobley
Jim Hall
Don Sebesky
Roland Hanna
Steve Gadd
Gil Evans
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Stan Kenton
Melba Liston
Grover Washington
Antonio Carlos Jobim
Claus Ogerman
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Hermeto Pascoal
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Joe Beck
Wayne Shorter
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Luiz Bonfa
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Jay Berliner
CTI Records
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