Grits, Beans and Greens: The Lost Fontana Studio Sessions 1969 is truly a "lost" album that's a jazz holy grail on par with
Tubby Hayes' 1968 albums
Mexican Green and
100% Proof. Cut with a smoking new band with whom he was trying to re-establish himself as a viable musician after two years of health problems, arrests, and other mishaps, this amounts to his last great album. The session reels containing it sat in boxes until 2014 when
Decca/
Universal hired high-end vinyl specialists
Gearbox Studios to master the sessions for the first time and deliver new lacquers. While the album was assembled from multiple takes,
Hayes' diary designated the final lineup's keepers.
Hayes was a consummate jazz musician -- arguably the greatest of 20th century England. His band here --
Spike Wells on drums, pianist
Mike Pyne, and bassist
Ron Mathewson -- roars through five mid-length to long tunes in sessions that were as loose as they were swinging. Opener "For Members Only" is counted off by
Hayes and set into motion by
Wells. After a couple of different "endings" in the intro, the jam kicks into gear with
Hayes in muscular form, his solo fleet, wildly imaginative, and harmonically astonishing as it encompasses his own developmental ideas and fascinations with the jazz vanguard and blues-inspired language.
Wells, who made his recorded debut here, swings like mad but keeps
Mathewson and his meaty yet lofty ideas grounded, while
Pyne delivers fat comps, vamps, and a tight solo. "Rumpus" is a monument to high musicality. This version is a first take, and its knotty construction crisscrosses the intricate athleticism of bop with its knotty head joined to the more physically demanding modal hard bop of
John Coltrane during the
Atlantic period.
Hayes' solo is dazzling in its complexity and feeling, with the rhythm section carving out space for him to explore. The title cut is a finger-popping hard bop groover; it offers dexterous, even competitive interplay between
Hayes and
Mathewson. A pair of covers round out the set. The first is a gorgeous, deeply felt version of
Duke Pearson's immortal ballad "You Know That I Care," in which
Hayes delivers both the lushness and deep emotion that makes fools of critics who claimed he was all flash and no feeling. The sprightly articulation of the Latin-ized rhythmic invention in "Where Am I Going?" by
Cy Coleman closes the set as
Wells pushes the band into a humid groove while
Hayes and
Mathewson communicate directly.
Pyne moves from sharp montunos to elegant, even romantic post-bop swing as
Hayes matches cadenzas with short phrases and seamless arpeggios. The sound is pristine; it that matches the soulfulness and technical proficiency of the playing, and
Hayes' biographer
Simon Spilett penned the copious liner notes.
Grits, Beans and Greens: The Lost Fontana Studio Sessions 1969 presents itself as a bona fide jazz holy grail. Hopefully, along with the documentary
Tubby Hayes: A Man in a Hurry, it will spark a true critical and popular reappraisal of
Hayes' work. ~ Thom Jurek
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