LISTEN TO THE EPISODE
Woody Shaw was twenty. Larry Young was twenty-four. Neither had led a record date. But in January 1965, both turned up at a studio in Germany’s Black Forest to play on a session led by Nathan Davis — a tenor player from Kansas City who had left the States two years earlier and never looked back. The result was one of the most sought-after records in the Saba catalog, an album that went out of print on vinyl for decades while its reputation only grew.
In this episode of Deep in the Stacks, we dig into that Black Forest session — seven tracks that range from the bluesy “The Flute in the Blues” to the searching, harmonically restless “Evolution,” the track where Shaw and Young push hardest against the edges of the material.
THE RECORD
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Nathan Davis
Nathan Davis (1937–2018) was a tenor saxophonist, soprano saxophonist, and flutist from Kansas City who spent much of the 1960s as an expatriate in Europe. After an Army posting in Berlin, he settled in Paris and became a fixture on the continent’s jazz circuit, performing alongside Kenny Clarke, Art Blakey, and Eric Dolphy. His work for the Saba label in Villingen, Germany — produced by Joachim Ernst Berendt — yielded two essential records: Happy Girl (1965) and The Hip Walk (1966). The sidemen on Happy Girl — Woody Shaw and Larry Young — would go on to reshape jazz in the decade ahead, with Young’s Unity (1965) arriving on Blue Note just months after this session.
Davis returned to the United States in 1969 and joined the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh, where he founded one of the first jazz studies programs at a major American university. He continued performing and recording — including sessions for SEGUE and Tomorrow International — while building a scholarly legacy that lasted nearly five decades. He was named a Pittsburgh Jazz Legend in 2003 and remained active as both educator and musician until his death.
Happy Girl was reissued on vinyl for Record Store Day 2025, the first time the album had been available on wax in decades. Explore more episodes.
SESSION DETAILS
Recorded
January 31, 1965
Studio
Saba Tonstudio
Villingen, Schwarzwald
Producer
Joachim Ernst Berendt
Engineer
Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer
Personnel
Woody Shaw — trumpet
Larry Young — piano
Jimmy Woode — bass
Billy Brooks — drums
WHY THIS ALBUM MATTERS
Happy Girl matters because it's a snapshot of the Paris jazz scene in 1965, when American expats and European players were pushing hard bop into shapes you didn't hear in New York. Nathan Davis had moved to Paris in 1962 to work in Kenny Clarke's quintet; this date for SABA brought together Woody Shaw and Larry Young — both passing through Europe at the same time — for music that splits the difference between Blue Note hard bop and what Albert Ayler was doing across town. Davis later founded the jazz-studies program at the University of Pittsburgh, where he taught for over forty years. The album is a window onto a brief, fertile cross-pollination moment that the European reissue labels are finally documenting properly.
Side 1
Side 2
Saba SB 15 025 ST · Original pressing
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