1959 Monterey Jazz Festival

This LP documents blues shouter Jimmy Witherspoon's now-legendary comeback set at the second Monterey Jazz Festival on October 2, 1959, an appearance that revived his career after a decade of struggling in dingy clubs following his late-1940s R&B hits. Backed initially by the Earl Hines Trio (Hines on piano, Vernon Alley on bass, Mel Lewis on drums), Witherspoon's performance built to such intensity that Roy Eldridge, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Urbie Green and Woody Herman spontaneously joined in for an extended all-star jam that closed the evening. The set became one of the defining moments in the young festival's history and one of the most celebrated live blues-jazz performances of the era, credited with re-establishing Witherspoon as a major vocal artist for the rest of his career. Witherspoon, who had scored a national hit years earlier with "Ain't Nobody's Business" and had recorded and toured with Jay McShann's band, found in this Monterey set the vindication of his classic blues-shouting style at a moment when rock and roll had eclipsed it commercially. The recording captures the raw electricity of a large festival crowd responding to a mix of blues standards and jump numbers, with the assembled horn giants trading solos behind Witherspoon's vocals. Critically the performance has long been cited as a highlight of Monterey's early years and a key document in Witherspoon's rediscovery narrative, cementing his reputation as one of the great blues singers to emerge from the swing and jump-blues tradition.