Hamilton's 10-year-old Jazz Archive received a newfound melody not too long ago. Monk Rowe, director of the Jazz Archive, discovered the only known recording of a single February, 1964, Providence, R.I., nightclub performance of two famed jazz legends, vocalist Joe Williams and tenor saxophonist Ben Webster, several years ago. This performance, which also featured pianist Junior Mance, bassist Bob Cranshaw and drummer Mickey Roker, became a CD this past February as a result of Rowe's discovery, and is titled Havin' A Good Time!
As the story goes, according to Mance, there was a blizzard in Providence on that February, 1964, night, yet despite the inclement weather and a low audience turnout, Joe Williams and his accompanists held to their commitment to play at Pio's Lodge. Upon their arrival at the club, without any knowledge of his being in town, they found Ben Webster, perched with his saxophone and readily prepared to join them in what was to become a serendipitous musical evening.
Williams' widow, Jillean, donated the recording of this Providence nightclub performance to Hamilton College after her husband died in 1999, because he was close friends with Milt Fillius Jr., '44, the founder of the Jazz Archive. Rowe reviewed the many tapes in the collection and felt the Pio's performance stood out. He brought the tape to Joel Dorn, a jazz record producer, broadcaster and raconteur, and it was Dorn's label, Hyena, that released the album.
In the liner notes for Havin' A Good Time!, Rowe says, "I was sure I had found the right producer when Joel Dorn leapt out of his seat and exclaimed, 'Do you know what you've got here?' In fact, I was fairly sure of what I had in these unreleased reel to reel tapes from the estate of Joe Williams."
Throughout his career, Williams became an international jazz icon, equally on large and small levels, performing the blues with Count Basie's big band and intimately gracing small clubs. Webster, who died in 1973, was considered one of the primary, influential jazz saxophonists of the jazz era, first performing with bands such as Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington in the 1930s, and later with smaller bands and solo.
Mance added in his description of that 1964 night that Williams and Webster "showed what jazz is really about. It's what happens when world-class players get together and do what cats have been doing for decades—make magic on the spot. Thank God somebody was runnin' a tape."
Even though the Williams and Webster performance took place 41 years ago, their collaboration is timeless. "When I listen, I hear great, spontaneous music created in the haze of night club smoke with the accompaniment of clinking cocktail glasses. As it should be," Rowe adds in the liner notes.
Hamilton's Jazz Archive includes a compilation of more than 200 videotaped interviews with jazz musicians, arrangers, writers and critics. In addition to featuring artists from the mainstream jazz and swing eras, the Jazz Archive also includes interviews conducted by Joe Williams, with such artists as Oscar Peterson, George Shearing, Clark Terry and Milt Hinton.
-- by Katherine Trainor
