On September 16, 1950, Dizzy Gillespie took a sextet into a New York studio for Prestige — a label not yet two years old, the session logged at matrix numbers 108 through 111 — with Jimmy Heath on alto, Milt Jackson doubling vibes and piano, Percy Heath on bass and Joe Harris on drums. The tenor chair went to Jimmy Oliver, a Philadelphian who spent his career declining the road; by his own account, his family and a clear-eyed fear of the drugs killing his contemporaries kept him home. The standard account has him deputising for an ill John Coltrane, then in Gillespie’s band and mid-way through his own switch from alto to tenor. Four titles were cut. “She’s Gone Again” carries Oliver’s solo — one of the very few recordings he is known to have made, and one some discographers still refuse to credit him with, filing “Jimmy Oliver” as a pseudonym for Seldon Powell.
Dizzy Gillespie in New York, around May 1947 — three years before the Prestige sextet date whose tenor chair is still argued over. No freely licensed photograph of Jimmy Oliver is known to exist. (Photo: William P. Gottlieb, Public Domain — Gottlieb donated the rights to his 1938–1948 jazz photographs to the public — via the Library of Congress and Wikimedia Commons)
Sources: Dizzy Gillespie Discography — Jazz Discography Project (September 16, 1950 sextet session: Jimmy Oliver on tenor, full personnel, four titles) , Prestige Records Discography: 1950 — Jazz Discography Project (matrix 108–111; “She’s Gone Again” issued on Prestige 736) , Jimmy Oliver (musician) — Wikipedia (Philadelphia career; sitting in for an ill Coltrane on September 16, 1950; the solo on “She’s Gone Again”) , “Jimmy Oliver has passed away” — organissimo forums (Philadelphia Inquirer obituary; discographer Michael Fitzgerald on sources listing “Jimmy Oliver” as a pseudonym for Seldon Powell) , Jimmy Oliver — Philadelphia Jazz (phillyjazz.us) (his bands, the Zanzibar Café, and his decision to stay in Philadelphia) , John Coltrane Discography, session index — Jazz Discography Project (no Coltrane session on September 16, 1950; alto with the Gillespie sextet in mid-1950, tenor by the January 1951 Birdland broadcasts)
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