During the Fifties, jazz record producer Dick Bock was responsible for many great albums, and his label, Pacific Jazz, excelled at introducing many of the most outstanding young promising jazzmen who worked on the Los Angeles jazz scene. This was true in the case of 20-year-old tenor saxophonist from Dallas, James Clay, who lived and played on the West Coast since mid-1955. At that time his colleagues were all young and independent experimentalists, completely outside of the flourishing West Coast jazz movement. He used to play with trumpeter Don Cherry, drummer Billy Higgins, altoists Ornette Coleman and Hadley Caliman, and with lesser known musicians such as altoist George Newman. According to Don Cherry, Clay became one of the strongest influences in his musical development.

“Up to the time I met him I’d been concentrating on knowing everything I played and James Clay came along and played what he heard and really felt —and he could make you cry.” Clay and Cherry formed a group called The Jazz Messiahs, which played the intermissions at the jazz room of the  Chase Hotel on Santa Monica beach.

The presence of Clay in Los Angeles created a lot of excitement, not only among young musicians, but also among established veterans who recognized the potential of this kid from Dallas as a straight ahead player. Although he said he was not an outside player, Clay worked easily within the unconventional settings of Coleman’s compositions. He recalled that many Los Angeles musicians who were not completely put off by Coleman’s eccentric alto saxophone improvisations and wild appearance, and who admired his tunes, were nonetheless afraid to play them.

But it was paradoxical that, although Clay became fond of avant-garde jazz, his only recordings were not at all in line with Ornette’s controversial music. His ideas flow melodically, especially on ballads, and his up-tempo blowing statements come from the strong swinging style that characterized other Texas tenors such as Illinois Jacquet and Arnett Cobb, with a hard-bop approach clearly influenced by his idol, Sonny Rollins.

Dick Bock recorded Clay only once, and then only one tune. It was an excellent rendition of “In a Sentimental Mood,” with Chet Baker’s rhythm section. It took place on July 25, 1956, while Bock was recording the trumpeter’s sextet at the old and neglected Forum Theatre, a space he was using back then as the setting for some of his projects.

The recording would later come out as part of an anthology album titled “Solo Flight” that was issued on Bock’s World Pacific label. This production was a presentation of fine jazz solos by different artists.

Ten days after this first date, Herbert Kimmel, from the Jazz West label, was the first to produce an entire album featuring the newly discovered tenor saxophonist. The recording took place at the Capitol Studios and was engineered by John Kraus. The leader of the session was drummer Lawrence Marable, who took James Clay under his wing and made this recording possible. Marable had put-together a quartet with his young “protegé” on tenor and convinced Kimmel to set up a recording session. Clay was Marable’s ticket. The other two members of the rhythm section were pianist Sonny Clark and bassist Jimmy Bond. Always fully swinging, Clark’s solos are funkily to the point. Bond and Marable are also effective in their few solo spots. The 12” LP was released under the title “Tenorman,” in a clear reference to Clay. That is the reason why, over the years, the album has been more associated to James Clay than to Marable.

On the liner notes Kimmel wrote for “Tenorman,” he briefly explains how he found out about the tenor player: “Ever since 1954 Lawrence Marable has been beating the bushes for a new horn man; an unspoiled ‘rookie’ whose corners would be rough and unpolished, a voice that could speak right out, unschooled, unrefined, free and clear of the restraints that tend to tie down and mould would-be jazzmen and make them hew the line of convention and sophistication.”

“Many times Lawrence and I talked about various ‘new’ prospects, but our conversations would always end the same way: this boy’s not just right, he’s afraid to blow right out; always too much technique and too little guts, whatever feeling hadbeen there was long since sacrificed in the mad scramble for respectability.”

“At times Lawrence’s disappointment seemed final; at times he began to think the man he was looking for had become obsolete, a victim of the mass pressure for name brands.”

“Then, around the end of July of 1956, I received at least a dozen phone calls in the space of one week. Among the callers were Joe Maini, Jack Sheldon, John Tynan (of Down Beat), and Lawrence Marable. Everybody wanted to know if I had heard Marable’s discovery, James Clay. I hadn’t, but that was remedied quickly. Lawrence told me that Clay had arrived one day that week from Dallas and had sat in at the Californian (one of the remaining clubs in Los Angeles affording that opportunity to young jazzers), that right then and there Lawrence had known that this was the one.”

“Two weeks later this album was recorded and a new tenorman had arrived on the jazz scene; a 20 year old kid who wears a funny little green hat reminiscent of the cocky felts Lester Young used to sport, a shy giant-to-be who somehow or other (he’s just a skinny little guy) manages to produce a sound as big as the whole heart of jazz, sometimes steel-edged along Hawkins-Rollins-Stitt lines, sometimes soft and smooth around the curves like Lester Young. But always felt and always swinging.”

Nat Hentoff said that Clay’s playing displayed a big, hot tone, that he wailed rhythmically with forthright emotion. He also wrote that “he’s already mastered at an early age the things that the rest of us seem to be wallowing around trying to get. He’s able to express himself beautifully and fluently and his time feeling is very good.”

James Clay played with Marable’s quartet until December 1956, when he left to join briefly the quintet of fluegelhornist Jack Millman at the Topper club. About the same time, he began playing flute. A couple of months later James began rehearsals with the new quartet of bassist Red Mitchell, which had Lorraine Geller on piano and Frank Capp on drums. They opened in Pasadena, at Joe Zucca’s club, The Cottage, and they appeared on the TV show “Stars of Jazz.” Shortly after that, Red took his quartet into The Haig, with Billy Higgins replacing Frank Capp. The Haig was one of the last fulltime jazz rooms left in Hollywood and Mitchell’s quartet was the last group to work there six nights a week.

During the Haig engagement, the group was approached by Lester Koenig, who offered them the opportunity to record an album for his Contemporary label. On this particular date, Clay alternated on flute and tenor, swinging hard on both, displaying a virile tenor sound and showing every indication of growth.

It would be the first and only time this group recorded, but this handful of performances is ample proof that the group was going places musically. As much as Mitchell wanted the group to continue, though, it finally broke up because of Lorraine’s motherhood and the overall economic situation… but certainly not through any musical fault of its own.

Once Red Mitchell’s group disbanded, James joined the neo-bop quartet of trumpeter Don Cherry, with Don Payne, bass, and Billy Higgins, drums. This short-lived avant-garde quartet became the talk of the town. Very shortly thereafter, the death of Clay’s mother forced him to return to Dallas to support his grandmother. Unfortunately for him, these tragic circumstances did not allow him to join the Miles Davis Quintet when the trumpeter was looking for a tenor player to replace Sonny Rollins. He stayed in his hometown until 1960, when he decided to move back to Los Angeles and began working as a freelance in several recording sessions until, thanks to his friend, David ‘Fathead’ Newman, he joined the Ray Charles Orchestra, where he performed and recorded until he returned to Dallas in the mid-Sixties.

There, he continued playing as usual and, from 1980 appeared in a few recordings with jazzmen from the local scene. He has also visited Los Angeles to perform as sideman in some interesting recording sessions led by his friends Billy Higgins and Bill Perkins. In 1988 he traveled East to participate on Don Cherry’s Art Deco album, where he met his old friends and played in a style unchanged from the past and just as strong. Finally, James Clay recorded a pair of excellent straight-ahead albums for Antilles before his death in Dallas on January 6, 1994.

—Jordi Pujol (From the inside liner notes of FSRCD 853)