Creed Taylor Produced

This is an edited and expanded version of a March 2020 original post to celebrate Wes Montgomery’s award at the 9th Grammys.

At the 9th Annual GRAMMY Awards (1966), presented on March 2nd, 1967, Wes Montgomery won the Grammy for BEST INSTRUMENTAL JAZZ PERFORMANCE – GROUP OR SOLOIST WITH GROUP for “Goin’ Out Of My Head”.

“Goin’ Out of My Head” was producer Creed Taylor’s idea that Montgomery should do a cover of the title song, a 1964 hit by Little Anthony and the Imperials. Here are a couple of extracts that show how this remarkable track and recording came about.

It all began, really, back in 1965 when Creed Taylor gave Wes Montgomery a copy of “Going Out Of My Head” by Little Anthony and the Imperials and suggested that Wes might like to include the tune on his next album. Montgomery looked at Taylor with an expression which clearly said, “You’ve certainly gone out of yours.’’ But he was ultimately persuaded to record the song and it completely transformed his career.

The album, “Goin’ Out Of My Head, was a seller which won a Grammy award as the best instrumental jazz performance of 1966. It also opened the way for Montgomery to spend the last two or three years of his tragically short life enjoying the financial security to which his musical genius more than entitled him.

Mike Hennessy, Creed Taylor Interview – UK Jazz Journal November 1979. Vol. 32 No. 11

Creed also noted separately that the track had great changes, , it was a “well-structured composition” and after Wes agreed to record it, Oliver Nelson pulled the arrangement together and send a tape to Wes to listen to in advance of the studio date.

“If you take away the R&B performance and just look at that song, it’s an absolutely marvelous song to improvise on.” “I can remember to this day when I brought that record to him,” Taylor says. “He was actually at the Half Note, in the West Village. He was there with Wynton Kelly and that group. I brought the record by and said, ‘Listen to it. Oliver Nelson is going to write the chart for this, and Oliver can take any kind of a song and mold it into a context that you’re going to be very happy with.’ So he decided, ‘OK, whatever you say,’ more or less.

Wes Montgomery: The Softer Side of Genius – Josef Woodard, jazztimes.com

Taylor knew that if Wes was to reach his deserved status, it would have to be through radio plays, and the radio would not play almost anything from his earlier sessions except on late-night shows when “interminable solos” were acceptable. “Going Out Of My Head” sold a million copies, reached #7 on the Billboard R&B chart, and, as noted, won a Grammy Award.

Which ever way you look at it, 1968 and 1969 were the year of “Wes Montgomery”.

Billboard ranked four of Montgomery’s album in the top-25 best selling Jazz records, seven of which were produced by Taylor. The original albums, “A Day In The Life”, “Down Here On The Ground” and “Road Song” would spend six months in the jazz chart, becoming big sellers for Sears, Montgomery Ward and K-Mart. Wes had truly crossed over. His albums would also appear in the Billboard Easy Listening chart, and the R&B chart.

While the Beatles, Diana Ross & The Supremes and Glen Campbell filled the top slots in the best selling LP’s, “Road Song” even more remarkably, entered the Top-LP chart in November 1968 at #150, climbed into the Top-100 LP’s in January and stayed in the chart until March.

Sell-out?

What’s a sell-out? Simply put, to the musical purist, combining the different elements of two or more musical genres or styles, such as country, rock, blues, and jazz, is unthinkable. Doing it only for commercial reasons, to them, is a sell-out. To the artist and producer, it’s simply a fusion of styles. Jazz music, like vinyl records, never went away and are both enjoying a rediscovery of the music. There remains though the idea that jazz still requires an almost sacrosanct preservation, off-the-cuff criticism of commercial jazz recordings is still common.

In his article, Hennessey also writes about the cries of “sell-out” that followed Wes after his hit records ^[1]The whole article can be read here: http://ctproduced.com/creed-taylor-in-1979/, and to a point still do today. It’s easy to find a review that complains about Montgomery’s commercial sellout. Wes never did sell out, though; his live music performances following the recordings did include versions of the hit tracks but in a more authentic way.

J.R. Taylor (no relation), writing in the copious liner notes to a 1975 Milestone double album compilation “Pretty Blue” ^[2]https://www.discogs.com/release/3166290-Wes-Montgomery-Pretty-Blue wrote, “we must regret that Montgomery’s gifts were turned so completely toward the radio industry’s idea of what a good record was,” and adds: “Nearly all of what will eventually answer for Montgomery’s creative reputation was recorded for Riverside.”

Hennessey also noted that “including not a few of his fellow musicians, took a realistic view of the harsh economics of being a jazz musician and argued that five-star reviews wouldn’t feed Wes’s wife and six children.”

My favorite dismissal of Wes Montgomery’s supposed sell-out came in a February 1969 reply in the “Chords & Discords” letter column in Downbeat. Writing in response to a complaint from a Jack Winter – Denver, Colorado – about Downbeat readers electing a “recently dead musician” to the Hall Of Fame. The editor Dan Morgenstern wrote “Winter compromises his point by his absurd underestimation of Wes Montgomery, whose talent was any­ thing but minor and who was incapable of being “third rate”, no matter how com­mercially successful.

Road Song

I’ve written about the album and Pete Turner’s classic photograph before ^[3]http://ctproduced.com/pete-turner-color-content-character/#ib-toc-anchor-14 , noting that the album was named after the picture rather than the other way around. It was also chosen, partly, as a nod to Montgomery’s life on the road. Wes, who didn’t like to fly, travelled relentlessly by car, almost to the point of exhaustion.

Wes’ manager at the time was John Levy, a Hall of Fame Manager as well as a former bass player for George Shearing. Levy would grasp the opportunity to get Montgomery in front much larger audiences in major concert venues ^[4]Levy was also manager to Nancy Wilson, Joe Williams, Cannonball Adderley, Ahmad Jamal, Ramsey Lewis, Freddie Hubbard and Herbie Hancock; and crossover stars like Roberta Flack and Les McCann – In 2006, the National Endowment for the Arts recognized Levy as a Jazz Master, the nation’s highest jazz honor ^[5]http://www.personalmanagershalloffame.org/john-levy.html.

The recording sessions for “Road Song” were May 7-9 ^[6]https://www.dougpayne.com/ctid3k.htm#roadsong, 1968. Wes Montgomery passed away just 36-days later of a sudden heart attack, aged just 45, before he could enjoy the rewards from his success. There is little doubt that his life on the road contributed to his early demise. The “Road Song” sessions, like almost everything Wes did with Taylor are characterized by taste, restraint, a finely honed sense of melody and the distinctive touch of a jazz master. Road Song spent almost 8-months in the Best Selling Jazz LP’s chart. It was #8 Top Jazz album of 1969, with “A Day In The Life” #4.

TO READ

Discogs [Wes Montgomery’s artist page and discography]
grammy.com [Wes Montgomery’s Grammy Nominations and wins]
jazztimes.com [Wes Montgomery: The Softer Side of Genius, Josef Woodward]
ctproduced.com [Thumb Produces Green – 3-months before his death, Wes had a multi-night engagement playing at the Living Room in Cincinnati. Hap O’Daniel spoke to Wes and wrote the following for the Cincinnati Post, published in their Thursday March 7th, 1968 issue.)]

Updates:
21 March, 2025 8:30pm – Tidy up references tags to correct error, minor grammatical changes.