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Apollo landings
Delmark unveils a treasure trove
BY BILL KISLIUK

Digging out old musical nuggets has become something of an extreme sport for archivists in the era of the CD. Breathing new life into mislabeled and moldering jazz and blues master recordings that have been buried in some leaky warehouse is both the challenge and the reward for hardcore devotees like Bob Koester, the founder of Delmark Records in Chicago.

Koester struck gold when he acquired the rights to material from Apollo Records, an eclectic label started in 1944 at a record store near the famed Harlem theater. Delmark has now released a batch of four CDs culled from the collection, which includes acetate originals, master tapes, and even tracks for which there were no remaining originals — which meant Koester and label manager Steve Wagner had to borrow copies from collectors for reissue. There’s a smoking set by tenor titan Illinois Jacquet, a sampler of West Coast jump blues featuring sax player Jack McVea, and two bluesier discs.

Koester, whose own jazz and blues label will celebrate a half-century in business with a box set next year, explains over the phone that the primary wheels at Apollo were a pair of New Jersey jukebox operators named Bess and Ike Berman. "Their uncle owned a record pressing plant," he says, noting that there were few indies then and that the shellac used for recording was rationed during World War II. "In 1944, if you wanted to be in the record business, it was a damn good idea to have an uncle who owned a pressing plant."

Over its 18 active years, Koester points out, Apollo recorded Dean Martin, the O’Jays, and several doo-wop groups. The material he controls, however, captures blues as it came up from the country and jazz as it evolved from big band to bop. Jack McVea, the saxophone player who’s the centerpiece of McVoutie’s Central Avenue Blues, roamed the then-unmapped territory between jazz and R&B. His big tune was a comedy-sketch-turned-novelty called "Open the Door Richard." It’s not part of this release, but McVea’s velvety tone, with plenty of power in store, is palpable. He offers brightly swinging pre-bop on Benny Carter’s "O-Kay for Baby" and leads deft section work behind R&B shouter Wynonie Harris and others. It seems a waste that McVea, who died in 2000, spent the last 20 years or so of his career playing clarinet in a Dixieland band at Disneyland.

If McVea sounds suave on his disc, the first few seconds of the Jacquet set, Jumpin’ at Apollo, make it clear who set the pace in those days. Jacquet’s tenor attack is so fierce, his tone so robust, that his solos rocket out of the speakers. A few years before these sides (which are also available as part of a Jacquet box set on Mosaic), he recorded an incendiary solo on Lionel Hampton’s "Flyin’ Home" that was emulated by a generation of sax players and is still the stuff of fake books. "Flyin’ Home" doesn’t appear here, but you’ll barely notice when you’re listening to "Bottoms Up," where Jacquet takes the familiar foundation and builds to a dizzy, wailing peak. Sidemen on the CD include bassist Charles Mingus, who can be heard "walking" with a swagger years before he would come into his own, and future blues hitmaker Bill Doggett.

Like Jacquet, Wynonie Harris spawned many imitators. Powerful enough to overcome the horn section and stylish in material that was funny or sorrowful or smart, he appears on both the McVea and the Jacquet discs. And two shouters who worked in her shadow share the spotlight on Hoot and Holler Saturday Night! Piney Brown and Eddie Mack did not make deep dents on the charts, but they knew their way around jump blues. This set shows their talents to good effect, with a half-dozen cuts never previously released. The several top-shelf jazzmen include tenor players Ike Quebec and Willis "Gator Tail" Jackson.

A solid down-home guitar duo, Alec "Guitar Slim" Seward and Louis "Jelly Belly" Hayes, are featured on the last of these Delmark releases, The Back Porch Boys. Seward lived in New York, but the sounds he made with Hayes were in the Piedmont country-blues tradition of the Southeastern seaboard, folksier and more melodic than the raw stuff coming from the Mississippi Delta. Tracks by Blind Willie McTell and Champion Jack Dupree fill out the disc.

With this batch, Koester has just about exhausted his supply of Apollo material. In addition to the 20 discs now out (Dinah Washington, Coleman Hawkins, and Sunnyland Slim are featured on others), he still has a smattering of unreleased material, including sides by LA sax player Wardell Gray. The rest of the Apollo catalogue, including work by gospel great Mahalia Jackson, is in other hands. When Koester started combing the material, he was preparing to put it out on vinyl. "We had to recombobble everything for CD, and some projects just wouldn’t stretch. We’re still trying to deal with some of that stuff."

Issue Date: May 30 - June 6, 2002
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