The Album
Wild Bill Moore (1918-1983) was a Houston-born tenor saxophonist who became one of the great R&B 'honkers' of the late 1940s, scoring one of the earliest proto-rock'n'roll hits with 'We're Gonna Rock, We're Gonna Roll' on Savoy in 1947. After a decade of hard-blowing singles and a stretch in Detroit, he was signed by Orrin Keepnews to Riverside's Jazzland subsidiary for a surprising late-career reinvention as a straight-ahead soul-jazz leader. Bottom Groove, recorded July 5, 1961 at Plaza Sound Studios in New York, was his second and final Jazzland LP, following Wild Bill's Beat (JLP 38) from earlier that year. Where the first album featured Junior Mance's piano, this session substitutes the earthy organ of Johnny 'Hammond' Smith, borrowed from Prestige, and adds Ray Barretto's conga for a down-home, Latin-tinged groove. The program mixes blues-drenched Moore originals with Nat Adderley's 'Sister Caroline' and the Ellington-Tizol standard 'Caravan.' Though it made little commercial noise, the album is now prized by organ-combo and soul-jazz collectors as a rare document of a rock'n'roll sax pioneer sitting comfortably inside the early-60s groove movement, alongside one of Johnny Hammond Smith's finest sideman appearances.
The Label
This copy carries the original yellow Jazzland label with the black rectangular 'JAZZLAND' banner logo, 'long playing microgroove' banner text, and 'BILL GRAUER PRODUCTIONS INC. NEW YORK CITY' rim text; the back cover gives the 235 West 46th Street, New York 36 address. Jazzland was founded in 1960 by Bill Grauer and Orrin Keepnews as Riverside's jazz subsidiary, and this yellow-label/Bill Grauer Productions configuration is the label's only original-era design, in use from 1960 until Grauer's death and the company's bankruptcy in 1964. The mono catalog number JLP 54 (versus JLP 954S for the stereo edition, which the back cover itself advertises) and the typed matrix JLP-54-A/B confirm this is a mono first pressing from the album's 1961 release. Later catalog activity was limited to ABC-leased reissues (1967-71) and Fantasy-era product after 1972, none of which carried this label design.
Fidelity
Recorded and mastered at Plaza Sound Studios with Ray Fowler engineering, the house team for Grauer/Keepnews productions, which are generally well-regarded for warm, present mono sound. Original 1961 mono and stereo pressings are the only vintage analog cuts of this album; there are no audiophile reissues (no OJC/Analogue Productions/Tone Poet-style treatment), so the originals define the fidelity hierarchy. Forum discussion of the title is sparse, but the mono fold of this session is the more common collector's choice, and clean originals like this one are the best-sounding way to hear it - the only significant alternative is the 2002 Milestone CD two-fer with Wild Bill's Beat.
