Jazz Articles about Leroy Williams

About Leroy Williams

Album Review

The Joshua Breakstone Quartet: Wonderful!

Read "Wonderful!" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
August 23, 2026

Joshua Breakstone's Wonderful! arrives on CD nearly four decades after its original release. It is a reminder that truly good jazz never worries about expiration dates. Although the original recording came early in his career, Breakstone hardly sounds like a guitarist searching for his voice. The ideas are already in place. Thoughtful, swinging, and melodic, the music is delivered with the quiet confidence of someone who understands that understatement can be as compelling as fireworks. The company Breakstone ...

Album Review

The Joshua Breakstone Quartet: Wonderful!

Read "Wonderful!" reviewed by Neil Duggan

by Neil Duggan
August 17, 2026

This is a reissue of Joshua Breakstone's debut as leader. The recording, which has been out of print for nearly 40 years, dates back to 1984, when the guitarist was 27 years old. It also marks the first time the recording has been available on CD. While many guitarists of a similar vintage built success by forging ahead in jazz-rock, Breakstone followed a more time-honored path, following the trail of Kenny Burrell, Grant Green and Wes Montgomery. He ...

298

Album Review

Leroy Williams: Time Is

Read "Time Is" reviewed by Mitchell Seidel

by Mitchell Seidel
October 6, 2004

At 67, the precocious Leroy Williams is prepared to unleash his talents as a leader on the music world. Williams, a wonderfully melodic drummer who has been playing around New York for decades, always seems to be an important part of someone else's group. Hopefully, this album will alert folks to his talents. For his debut effort he has assembled a stirling group of people who know how to--as the old report card said--play well with others. Guitarist ...

813

Rhythm In Every Guise

Leroy Williams

by David A. Orthmann
December 4, 2003

A journeyman who is well regarded by his peers but seldom acknowledged by critics or the listening public, Leroy Williams has played in the bands of many of the jazz giants who came to prominence during the mid-to-late twentieth century. Despite high profile work with Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, and Stan Getz, over thirty years in the company of Barry Harris, plus dozens of interesting recording dates, Williams’ self-effacing artistry often goes unnoticed. A smart, unobtrusive stylist in the bebop ...

387

Album Review

Hank Mobley: Thinking of Home

Read "Thinking of Home" reviewed by Richton Guy Thomas

by Richton Guy Thomas
January 22, 2003

The great jazz critic Leonard Feather once described Hank Mobley as the middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone. Not a name that the novice jazz fan may recognize, Hank Mobley recorded over twenty LPs for Blue Note. Thinking of Home is his last title for Blue Note; released in 1970, this is a fitting farewell session. It features the powerful trumpet playing of Woody Shaw and the exciting pianist Cedar Walton. Hank Mobley's playing has a fire that ...

331

Album Review

Hank Mobley: Thinking of Home

Read "Thinking of Home" reviewed by Robert Gilbert

by Robert Gilbert
November 3, 2002

Hank Mobley’s conclusion to his long and storied association with Blue Note Records has finally made it to CD through the label’s Connoisseur series. Thinking of Home, which was recorded on the last day of July in 1970 but not made available until ten years later, shows that the tenor saxophonist was still building on his trademark hard-bop style. A three-part suite that opens the album features Mobley dabbling with long-form composition and “Justine” has him providing a stimulating framework ...

328

Album Review

Barry Harris: Magnificent!

Read "Magnificent!" reviewed by C. Andrew Hovan

by C. Andrew Hovan
January 1, 2000

By the time pianist Barry Harris recorded his first session as a leader in 1958, Breakin' It Up for the Argo label, Charlie Parker had already been dead for three years and the be-bop movement that he had helped usher in was already giving way to the more visceral advance of hard bop and the beginning strains of Ornette Coleman's “new thing" approach. For Harris, who was a died-in-the-wool be-bopper, this meant coming on the scene a bit too late ...