[Ed. note: This post was originally published on December 21, 2015]
The birthdays of two of the most soulful alto saxophonists of all time bookended the weekend. Friday was Houston native Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson’s 98th; Monday is the 81st of Memphis-born Hank Crawford.
I relish the memories of having seen both of these players on numerous occasions. Crawford came to prominence with Ray Charles and served as his music director until 1963. The closest I would have come to seeing him with Ray was on the Ed Sullivan Show, but I caught him as often as possible when he and organist Jimmy McGriff played Scullers in Boston. I first saw Vinson at Sandy’s Jazz Revival in Beverly, MA, in August 1978, when he appeared with an all-star group that included Arnett Cobb, Buddy Tate, Ray Bryant, George Duvivier, and Alan Dawson. As I wrote in a previous post about the date, if I had it to do all over again, I’d have attended every night of their five-night engagement. A year or two later, I saw Vinson with Roomful of Blues in Cambridge and Providence. The pairing proved a good match, and Bob Porter produced a nice date on them for Muse in 1982.
Under different circumstances, I would have first heard Mr. Cleanhead in 1971 had rioting not disrupted that summer’s Newport Jazz Festival. The riot broke out on Saturday night; Vinson was scheduled for an all-blues program on Sunday night. Ray was the headliner of a card that also featured James Cotton, B.B. King, T-Bone Walker, and Big Joe Turner. But the Allman Brothers were also in the lineup, and presumably they drew the crowd that stormed the gates. “T-Bone Walker and Eddie Vinson were supposed to have played,” wrote George Wein in his autobiography, Myself Among Others. “T-Bone shook his head and mused about how long he had waited to play Newport.”
Seven years later, Wein put together the front line of Vinson, Crawford, and David “Fathead” Newman (Hank’s former colleague with Ray), for the Nice Jazz Festival in France in 1978. This distinguished front line was equally matched by the all-star rhythm section of Milt Hinton on bass, Alan Dawson on drums, and the legendary Jimmy Rowles at the piano. How rare and wonderful it is to see footage of Rowles, who plays on the first two pieces, “Tenor Madness” and “Autumn Leaves.” Wein spells him on Vinson’s signature tune, “They Call Me Mr. Cleanhead,” and a closing blues.
