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Jackie Cain & Roy Kral: Jackie Cain & Roy Kral: A Wilder Alias

By Chris May
August 25, 2011
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Jackie Cain & Roy Kral: Jackie Cain & Roy Kral: A Wilder Alias

Jackie Cain & Roy Kral

A Wilder Alias

CTI Masterworks

2011 (1974)

Producer

Creed Taylor

producer
1929 - 2022

" data-original-title="" title="">Creed Taylor's 1970s' label, CTI, has had a controversial history. Some of its detractors, averse to the lush sound and embrace of fusion, have been reluctant even to recognize CTI as a jazz label. The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (Macmillan, 1988 and 1994), for instance, the most authoritative pre-internet compendium of jazz information, contains no potted history—nor, more significantly, a biography of Taylor himself.

The second omission suggests that Grove's editors were so hostile to CTI that they were prepared, in retribution, even to "disappear" from their pages a man who had earlier in his career founded jazz's most influential post-Blue Note label, Impulse!, and produced its first half dozen albums. These included such universally acknowledged classics as composer and arranger

Gil Evans

composer / conductor
1912 - 1988

" data-original-title="" title="">Gil Evans' Out Of The Cool and saxophonists

Oliver Nelson

saxophone
1932 - 1975

" data-original-title="" title="">Oliver Nelson's Blues And The Abstract Truth and

John Coltrane

saxophone
1926 - 1967

" data-original-title="" title="">John Coltrane's Africa/Brass (all 1961).

CTI did, indeed, produce a fair amount of schlock, but, as Sony's 40th Anniversary reissue program is affirming, it also made many substantial recordings. The summer 2011 quartet of reissues includes two of these: pianist

Randy Weston

piano
1926 - 2018

" data-original-title="" title="">Randy Weston's Blue Moses and vocal duo

Jackie Cain

vocals
1928 - 2014

" data-original-title="" title="">Jackie Cain and

Roy Kral

b.1921

" data-original-title="" title="">Roy Kral's A Wilder Alias (1974).

Now all but unknown except among hardcore fans of vocal jazz, Cain and Kral are seriously deserving of a revival in interest. They started singing together in Chicago in the mid 1940s, as Jackie & Roy, before joining tenor saxophonist

Charlie Ventura

saxophone, tenor
1916 - 1992

" data-original-title="" title="">Charlie Ventura in 1948 and recording and touring as part of his Bop For The People band. They married in 1949 and, after spells in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, settled in New York City in 1963.

Both were songwriters as well as singers, and Kral (who passed in 2002) was a gifted pianist and arranger. Lucid and musicianly interpreters of The Great American Songbook, the pair were also virtuosic scat singers. It is no exaggeration to say that they were the equals of

Louis Armstrong

trumpet and vocals
1901 - 1971

" data-original-title="" title="">Louis Armstrong,

Ella Fitzgerald

vocals
1917 - 1996

" data-original-title="" title="">Ella Fitzgerald and

Anita O'Day

vocals
1919 - 2006

" data-original-title="" title="">Anita O'Day.

During the 1960s, Cain and Kral recorded in standards and scat vein for a variety of labels, including Verve, where Taylor had moved after leaving Impulse!. When Taylor quit Verve to set up CTI, the pair followed, making the more or less straight-ahead Time & Love in 1972.

And then came A Wilder Alias. Harking back to Evans' album, it might be re-titled Out Of The Blue, for it was unlike anything Cain and Kral had recorded before.

There are five, relatively lengthy tracks, the shortest 4:18 minutes, the longest 10:40. All are originals. There are lyrics for one tune only, with the other four conceived for wordless vocals. Electric piano and bass are used throughout, and the band includes jazz funk and fusion stars drummer

Steve Gadd

drums
b.1945

" data-original-title="" title="">Steve Gadd, flautist

Hubert Laws

woodwinds
b.1939

" data-original-title="" title="">Hubert Laws and saxophonist

Joe Farrell

saxophone
1937 - 1986

" data-original-title="" title="">Joe Farrell, in 1971 a founder member of

Chick Corea

piano
1941 - 2021

" data-original-title="" title="">Chick Corea's

Return to Forever

band / ensemble / orchestra

" data-original-title="" title="">Return to Forever. The liner notes give Kral as the arranger, with "music direction" from

Don Sebesky

arranger
1937 - 2023

" data-original-title="" title="">Don Sebesky (a Verve and CTI Taylor-stalwart, who arranged Weston's aforementioned Blue Moses).

Despite the sundrenched, albeit dramatic shorescape of the cover art, A Wilder Alias is an emotionally complex album, oftentimes quite dark. The opening title track starts in distinctly edgy mode, and ends with atonal free improvisation by the entire lineup; the closing track, the 10:40 minute "Good And Rich," ends with a dissonant collective chord, again from the entire lineup. Between times, an undercurrent of tension pervades the music, even on the overtly celebratory love song "Niki's Song," the one tune with lyrics. Tempos are mostly fast and urgent. The vocal arrangements, including their rapid-fire scat passages, are generally delivered in unison with the horns, or keyboard and drums, or the whole band, and as much attention is given to rhythm as it is to melody and harmony; even Farrell and Laws' solos sound, at times, quite closely scripted.

An intriguing one-off which reveals new facets with each repeated listening, and further evidence that CTI's oeuvre was a many splendored thing.

Tracks: A Wilder Alias; Niki's Song; Waltz For Dana; The Way We Are; Good And Rich.

Personnel: Jackie Cain: vocal; Roy Kral: vocal, electric piano; Joe Farrell: tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone; Hubert Laws: flute; Roy Pennington: vibraphone; Harvie Swartz: electric bass; Steve Gadd: drums.

Photo Credit

Courtesy of Anne Phillips

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Personnel

Jackie Cain

vocals

Album information

Title: Jackie Cain & Roy Kral: A Wilder Alias | Year Released: 2011 | Record Label: Unknown label

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