Tracks Unwrapped
Hittin' The Jug
Exploring the stories behind the music
Hittin’ The Jug is a composition by tenor saxophonist Gene Ammons. It appeared on his historic 1960 album Boss Tenor. The Quintet on that album were: Gene Ammons (tenor sax); Tommy Flanagan (piano); Doug Watkins (bass); Art Taylor (drums) and Ray Barretto (congas).
Listen to the track. One comment on YouTube says: 'One of the swing-ingest, slow pokey blues by Gene and Ray Barretta on those probing congas! Mr Gene Ammons was the best of the best. This is great stuff and very sadly not played anymore. I can listen to this till the cows come home!'
You could be forgiven for thinking that ‘Hittin’ The Jug’ refers to drinking alcohol. After all, many years previously in 1936, Stuff Smith and His Onyx Club Boys had recorded Old Joe’s Hittin’ The Jug
But the fact is that Gene Ammons was nicknamed ‘The Boss’ but also carried the nickname ‘Jug’.
The saxophonist was the son of boogie-woogie pianist Albert Ammons. One biography described how ‘Ammons was born on April 14, 1925, in Chicago, Illinois. His father was Albert Ammons, generally considered one of the top players of jazz boogie-woogie piano. The elder Ammons introduced boogie-woogie to an audience at New York City's Carnegie Hall as well as playing at President Harry Truman's inauguration in 1949. His son, however, chose to play the tenor saxophone rather than piano after hearing Lester Young play. Gene Ammons studied music with instructor Captain Walter Dyett at Du Sable High School in Chicago. While still in high school, Ammons performed and recorded with his famous father and later did a cross-country tour with King Kolax. With Ammons, the King Kolax Band played such important jazz venues of the 1940s as the Savoy Ballroom in New York City.
'When he was 19, he joined the Billy Eckstine band, where he played alongside Charlie Parker and, later, Dexter Gordon. Considered by many jazz historians and critics as the first bebop big band, Eckstine's group was the training ground for some of the most important and progressive jazz musicians of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, including Ammons, Parker, and Gordon, as well as Fats Navarro, Art Blakey, Miles Davis, Howard McGhee, and vocalist Sarah Vaughan ....
' ..... Despite an ongoing dependency on heroin beginning in the mid-1950s and several subsequent arrests and two prison sentences that together totalled nearly ten years, Ammons was a tremendously prolific recording and touring artist, a fact worth noting because many of his recordings remain in print or were remastered and reissued decades after his death ... Ammons appeared with the Eckstine band in the 1946 film Rhythm in a Riff. During this period, Ammons acquired the nickname "Jug" from Eckstine, who, according to American National Biography, told Ammons, "'You have a head like a jug,'" when straw hats ordered for the band did not fit Ammons. Eckstine disbanded the group in 1947, and Ammons then led a group, including Miles Davis and Sonny Stitt, that performed at Chicago's Jumptown Club ....’
Here is a clip from the movie Rhythm In A Riff:
Eugene ‘Jug’ Ammons died from cancer on 6th August 1974 at the age of 49. He is buried in Lincoln Cemetery, Illinois where his headstone reads ‘Eugene ‘Jug’ Ammons - The Song Is Ended ... But The Melody Lingers On ...’
Vocalist King Pleasure recorded Ammons’ Hittin' The Jug retitled as the vocalese song Swan Blues in 1962:
In an Allmusic review of Gene Ammons' final recording, they stated "It is ironic that on tenor saxophonist Gene Ammons' final recording date, the last song he performed was the standard "Goodbye." That emotional rendition is the high point of this session... It's a fine ending to a colourful career".
Listen to Gene Ammons' Goodbye.
Wikipedia says of Gene Ammons ‘Gene Ammons is remembered for his accessible music, steeped in soul and R&B’.
Gene 'Jug' Ammons