Monday, October 26, 2009

When I Found Don Patterson's "Holiday Soul" for 50 Cents

Originally posted on December 17, 2007

When I was first working in NYC I used to frequent the local vinyl outlets. I did it as part of my job anyway. (Convincing hardened New York vendors to order a single called “Backbreaker” was not all that easy.) Back then Sam Goody’s, in their years of strength, had a sale annex that was just down a few blocks from Port Authority towards New Jersey. You never knew what they were going to put in the bins there.

One day they had about a hundred copies of something called Holiday Soul (Prestige) by Jazz organist Don Patterson, each copy going for 50 cents! Now I had never heard of Don Patterson at that point, but looking on the back cover, I found that it was an organ trio (Hammond, electric guitar and drums) playing holiday music and that it was recorded around 1965.

Most importantly, Pat Martino was on guitar, who was then and still is one of the greatest living Jazz guitarists. Needless to say I bought it and still have a copy. It doesn’t seem to ever have come out on CD, which is a total shame. The band is swinging, Patterson has soul, and Martino sounds beautiful. The funky, lengthy guitar solo on “Jingle Bells” never fails to give me a good feeling. If you still do vinyl and see it around, grab it. I don’t think it will sell for 50 cents any more. Prices have risen for that disk.

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