Last week, I was in Washington DC and visited a few record shops. I am a big fan of jazz guitarist Pat Martino and my usual search process involves looking not just for his records, but also those of other great players that he worked with as a sideman early in his career.

It was a very good day on the latter count, as I found three records, all by different lead artists and all on Prestige, featuring Pat.

The earliest recording was made in 1964, Live! Action, by Willis “Gator Tail” Jackson.

Pat was 19 when this session was recorded at The Allegro club in New York. The session was a productive one, yielding three additional albums, also released on Prestige.

Pat had joined Willis’s band in 1962, when he was 17, after touring with Lloyd Price’s band at age 16. He is featured on a half dozen other Willis Jackson albums recorded and/or released in 1963-1964; and on several Jackson albums on Muse in the 1970’s (Headed and Gutted is a personal favorite; in particular, the cut “Gator Whale”.)

This was a pretty early date for Pat, as he was still going by his birth name, as the credits reveal:

Here’s a picture of the group, with the teen-age Pat:

My second find was a record by Trudy Pitts (or the Fabulous Trudy Pitts, as the title refers to her):

Trudy was a great organist very familiar to anyone who listened to jazz in Philadelphia from the 1960’s until her death in 2010. She made several records on Prestige in the late 1960’s and played with many jazz greats over the years. In Philadelphia, she was an institution, playing regularly with her husband, a drummer, Bill “Mr C.” Carney. She had a classical background and can really move all over the keyboard.

The song list reflects the times, including a version of Bob Crewe’s “Music to Watch Girls By”, an AM instrumental hit; and “The Spanish Flea”, which had been recorded by both Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass and Sergio Mendes & Brazil ’66. Many will remember it as the theme for The Dating Game. (It has also been featured on four episodes of The Simpsons – so far!).

This album was released in 1967; by now Pat had assumed his stage name. In Pat’s autobiography, Here and Now! (Backbeat Books), he explains that he chose the name in honor of his father, Mickey, who was an amateur guitar player and singer. Whenever Mickey had a chance to sit in with a band, he used the name Martino.

I had been looking for this record for some time. I assume I could have found it on-line, but leaving aside the uncertainty of condition, where would the fun be in that? This was a small shop, and I could tell the owner was not real familiar with the record, so maybe I lucked out.

The final album acquisition of the day (leaving aside the records selected by my wife Anne (Leonard Cohen and Dionne Warwick) and daughter Jean (Ben Vaughn)), was released in 1968, Four Dimensions, by the organist Don Patterson.

This is my first Don Patterson record, so I am just starting to appreciate him. It is a bit more of a post-bop jazz record than the other two – less of a supper-club set list (though there is nothing wrong with that).

The first cut “Red Top” gives a taste of the powerful sound of Don Patterson on the organ:

The set list below also features a version of James Moody’s “Last Train From Overbrook”. Being a Philadelphian, I thought this might be a reference to the Overbrook train station (even though Moody is not from Philly). The liner notes give a clue to the truth, saying “It was a happy occasion for James Moody when he recorded this tune”. Moody wrote the tune after his release from Overbrook Hospital in Cedar Grove, N.J., where he kicked his alcohol addiction.

I thought maybe I wouldn’t list the record shops visited – thinking of tales I have heard of “the old days” when a record collector would show up in a town and find the yellow page listings for “record stores” ripped out of the hotel’s phone books – but then that really is pretty silly. So here they are:

Red Onion Records – 1628 U Street NW (redonionrecords.com)

Joint Custody – 1530 U Street NW (jointcustodydc.com)

Also, though I did not visit it on this trip, veteran record collectors know that the DC area Valhalla for vinyl (and other formats) is Joe’s Record Paradise in Silver Spring.

Pat’s playing throughout these recordings is great, whether comping other soloists or stretching out for an extended solo.

For Pat Martino fans, I can’t say enough about his autobiography Here and Now!. In talking about the artists who brought him along, he says “My mentors were not looking for somebody who could read out of a fake book.  . . .  They weren’t looking for someone who graduated from Berklee School of Music in Boston. They were looking for someone who was on the street.”

He recounts a night in 1963, when, after playing a gig with Willis Jackson at Small’s Paradise (owned by Wilt Chamberlain) in Harlem, he goes down a few blocks to Count Basie’s club at 133rd and Seventh Avenue and joins a group of other guitarists standing on a street corner and talking: Wes Montgomery, Les Paul, Grant Green and George Benson. As Pat describes it, “The five of us went to Wells Chicken and Waffles and had breakfast and talked about guitar playing until the sun came up”.

I guess that’s what he meant about being “someone on the street”.