Jazz In Korea: A Story Goes With It

For those of you who won’t be in New York at the WFMU Record Fair this weekend, we are watching some  jazz vinyl on eBay. Here’s an interesting one with a story behind it: Howard McGhee and his Korean All Stars, Jazz At the Battlefront Volume 1, Hi-Lo 6001. This is an original 10-inch LP. It is listed in M- condition for the vinyl and VG++ for the cover. The current price is a little more than $100 and the seller is Euclid Records, who we hope to see at the record fair on Sunday. Anyway, this is the story behind the record. From what I recall, the great jazz bass player Oscar Pettiford was hired by the U.S. government to lead a group of jazz players to go over to Korea to play for the troops who were stationed there in 1951 or 1952. So he put together a group including Howard McGhee on trumpet, JJ Johnson on trombone, Rudy Williams on tenor sax, Skeeter Best on guitar and Charles Rice on drums. Pettiford, of course, was to be on bass — except something happened. I had heard it was a fight, perhaps in a bar, but my

memory may not be right about that. In any case, Pettiford was booted from the tour and sent home. The recordings of the trip, originally supposed to be the Oscar Pettiford All Stars, eventually became the Howard McGhee All Stars. Who, you may ask, played bass on the tour and the LP? Well, on the album the bassist is listed as follows: “CHRIS (bass) is a Filipino instrumentalist who replaced the group’s original bassist, Oscar Pettiford, after the Battle Zone Tour.” So, there it is: American Jazz All Stars, with Chris on bass. Cool record, by the way. If I recall correctly it is part of a two-record set.