Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson: Eddie Vinson Sings:

Clean Head's Back in Town (Bethelehem Jazz 1957/1996)

(aka "Freddie and the three Eddies")

Sometimes, breaking a few of the rules about shopping for CDs does some good. At a recent but rare Mall visit, I stopped in Fye's Music to witness the prominent displays of ridiculously-priced $23 pop-trash CDs "on sale" for $18.99. Put simply, nobody should ever routinely pay over $15 for an ordinary CD. Perhaps I am just a bit too Jewish to be a Shania Twain fan. I almost turned around and left on principle. However, being the "tribal" type that I am, a display of bargain CDs had caught my eye. On first glance, the names looked o.k. (Nat King Cole, Oscar Peterson, even Sonny Rollins), but it seemed like the same old repackeged Lo-Fi stuff that every bargain CD tends to have.

Undaunted, I continued looking. Following the rules and paying attention to the back-up band led me to discover this gem by Eddie Vinson. Ed Jones on Bass (Bass player for Basie's "New Testament" Orchestra of the 1950s and 60s), Freddie Green on guitar (Basie's rhythm guitarist from start to finish), and Ed Thigpen on drums convinced me that this CD was worth the $6.50 or so. Freddie and the three Eddies could not let me down. The band also featured Basieites Joe Newman on trumpet, and Henry Coker on trombone, and Frank Foster on tenor sax, but the rhythm section really caught my eye. In hindsight, it was worth the price of a Shania album and more.!

Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson (he lost his hair early on after a botched bout with a lye-based hair-straightener) was sax player who doubled as a Blues Shouter of the Jimmy Witherspoon variety: a deep, rich voice; an ability to phrase the music so as to really dig deep into the emotion of each song; and yet a refined ability to skate the line between Blues and Jazz. Vinson played a mean sax, in styles from straight Jump Blues R&B to a pure Jazz format with the likes of Miles Davis or Cannonball Adderly. A Texas native of Houston, Vinson made his tour of duty playing alto sax in Big Bands in the late 30s and 40s, including Cootie Williams and Big Bill Broonzy. He struck it out on his own in the mid-40s, and even mentored an unknown, young sprite, John Coltrane, through 1952-53. Somewhere along about here, Vinson wrote two Miles Davis classics, "Tune Up" and "Four." Vinson steadfastly kept one foot in the blues camp and the other in jazz and continued touring until his death in 1988 of a heart attack.

On this album recorded in 1957 when Vinson was 37, Cleanhead puts even 'Spoon to shame as a Blues shouter with some amazingly rich and soulful vocals on mid-tempo, danceable Blues numbers. This CD contains at least four or five absolutely phenomenal Blues numbers the way that all Lindy Hop Blues should be played: a great, driving Bass line, a laid-back rolling rhythm, and incredibly talented singers and soloists filling the groove. This is rich, well-recorded, superbly-produced Jump Blues without the Jump Jive: the way it should be.

As with many re-releases of material released in the 1950s, the cover design is sometimes different in the re-release, with the two design versions pictured here. Frankly, the newer cover (top) is an improvement, but both are provided so you can identify them by sight.

The "Album of the Week" always provides great music, but this one is something special that really has got me especially excited! Finds like this one are what keeps my obsessiveness going about this dance and this music!!

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