Crescendo Blues

Crescendo Blues is a jazz composition by trumpeter Jack Sheldon, written sometime before 1955. The tune takes its name from Gene Norman's Crescendo Club on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, a prominent venue in the West Coast jazz scene of the 1950s where Sheldon regularly performed. The composition is a blues vehicle designed to accommodate extended improvisation, and it was first documented on a March 31, 1955 session led by alto saxophonist Frank Morgan for the GNP Crescendo label. That recording featured a septet including Conte Candoli on trumpet, Wardell Gray on tenor saxophone, Howard Roberts on guitar, Carl Perkins on piano, Leroy Vinnegar on bass, and Larance Marable on drums. A second recording followed on August 11, 1956, again under Morgan's leadership, this time as a sextet with Sheldon himself on trumpet alongside James Clay on tenor saxophone and flute, Bobby Timmons on piano, Jimmy Bond on bass, and Marable on drums, released on the album Frank Morgan on GNP Crescendo. Sheldon, who went on to broader recognition as a vocalist and actor, was primarily known in this period as an inventive hard bop trumpeter embedded in the Los Angeles club scene. Crescendo Blues has not entered the broader jazz standard repertoire and remains principally associated with these Frank Morgan recordings.