Teddy Edwards and Howard McGhee – Together Again!!!!

A reunion with a substantial history

The four exclamation marks in Together Again!!!! leave little doubt about the occasion. Teddy Edwards and Howard McGhee were renewing a partnership that reached back to Los Angeles in the 1940s. McGhee had been looking for a tenor saxophonist and persuaded Edwards, then an alto player, to change instruments. Their relationship therefore touches a decisive step in Edwards' own development. The meeting documented in 1961 has a history that begins long before the first performance on this record.

The quintet recorded for Contemporary on 15 and 17 May. Lester Koenig produced the sessions and Roy DuNann handled the engineering. Alongside Edwards' tenor and McGhee's trumpet were Phineas Newborn Jr. on piano, Ray Brown on bass and Ed Thigpen on drums. Although the title highlights the two leaders, the rhythm section is equally specific. Every name represents an individual career, and several connections within the ensemble extend well beyond the dates on the recording sheet.

A rhythm section with its own connections

Brown and Thigpen were working together in the Oscar Peterson Trio. Here their shared experience met Newborn, who had moved to Los Angeles in 1960 and would record extensively for Contemporary. Within weeks of Together Again!!!!, he played on McGhee's Maggie's Back in Town!!. His own A World of Piano! followed later in the year. The horn players' reunion consequently also forms part of an especially productive Contemporary period for the pianist.

Brown, too, had a prior connection with McGhee, having recorded in his Dial sextet in 1947. These overlapping histories make the personnel more than a collection of well-known guests. As you listen, follow Newborn's movement between accompaniment and his own contributions, then consider the equivalent changes of responsibility in bass and drums. The two horns occupy the front line, but the direction of the performance, its pace and its harmonic movement depend on all five musicians working together.

Six selections, three composers within the group

Edwards wrote the opening “Together Again”, and McGhee supplied the closing “Sandy”. Both approach ten minutes, giving the beginning and end of the album substantial space. Between them sits Brown's “Up There”, the shortest selection at just over three minutes. Half the programme therefore comes from members of the quintet. The remaining pieces are “You Stepped Out of a Dream”, Charlie Parker's “Perhaps” and Erroll Garner's “Misty”, placing the original contributions alongside different kinds of established repertoire.

“Perhaps” makes a direct connection with the leaders' bebop past. McGhee had recorded with Parker for Dial, and Edwards belonged to the same broader musical environment. “Misty”, by contrast, was still a relatively recent composition when these sessions took place, having been recorded by Garner in 1954. The album looks backwards without simply reenacting an earlier moment. Hearing the shorter selections between the extended originals reveals how the sequence balances different lengths, purposes and sources of musical material.

This Contemporary edition

ACONC 760 is a single 180-gram LP in Craft's Contemporary Records Acoustic Sounds Series. Bernie Grundman cut the lacquers, with Craft specifying original master tapes and an AAA chain. Quality Record Pressings manufactured the vinyl, and the edition comes in a tip-on jacket. It retains the six tracks of the original album. Roy DuNann's recording-engineering credit and Grundman's later cutting credit describe separate responsibilities carried out decades apart, rather than interchangeable aspects of the same session.

The repertoire deserves equally careful identification. “Up in Dodo's Room” belongs to Edwards and McGhee's earlier collaboration, but it is not on this LP. Maggie's Back in Town!! is another album, not a track from these dates. This reunion tells its story through “Together Again”, “You Stepped Out of a Dream”, “Up There”, “Perhaps”, “Misty” and “Sandy”. Their particular sequence turns an old musical relationship into a self-contained record that can be enjoyed without first knowing every chapter of the musicians' shared history.

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Series: Contemporary – all 24 records: sunny jazz from Los Angeles

Musicians

Personnel for this album version are documented. Track-specific participation is shown in the final column.