Jazz Articles about Sam Jones

About Sam Jones

Album Review

Bill Evans: Everybody Still Digs Bill Evans: A Career Retrospective (1956 - 1980)

Read "Everybody Still Digs Bill Evans: A Career Retrospective (1956 - 1980)" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
July 20, 2021

Only occasionally do classy looking limited-edition box sets prove to be a triumph of style and substance. Too often they are undermined by cheapskate packaging, over elaborate design, poorly written and researched booklets, inadequate session details or, most egregiously, bizarre (in a bad way) track selections. So it is a more than pleasant surprise when something comes along which succeeds, and succeeds magnificently, on all those fronts. Such an item is Concord Records' Craft imprint's Everybody Still Digs Bill Evans: ...

Album Review

Freddie Hubbard: Open Sesame

Read "Open Sesame" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
March 19, 2020

Blue Note's two 180gm vinyl-reissue series--Blue Note 80 and Tone Poet--continue on their enigmatic going on erratic, but mostly magnificent paths. Tone Poet is billed as the audiophile option but, on a fairly limited sampling of both series, there seems to be little, if anything at all, separating the two in audio terms. The key difference is that Tone Poet has the more luxurious, heavyweight packaging. Whatever. It is the music that counts—and 22-year old Freddie Hubbard's 1960 label debut ...

Album Review

Tina Brooks Quintet: The Complete Recordings

Read "The Complete Recordings" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
March 9, 2020

Mosaic Records' spring 2020 release The Complete Hank Mobley Blue Note Sessions 1963-70, the second of the label's box sets devoted to the copiously recorded (and rightly so) Hank Mobley, prompts thoughts of another of Blue Note's singular hard-bop tenor saxophone stylists. Unlike Mobley, Tina Brooks was woefully under-recorded, making just four albums under his own name. But like Mobley, Brooks had an instantly recognisable sound, was a spellbinding soloist and was also a gifted composer. In addition to his ...

Album Review

Oscar Peterson: Exclusively For My Friends

Read "Exclusively For My Friends" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
September 18, 2015

An 8-CD set of recordings from the great Oscar Peterson, beautifully recorded, sumptuously packaged and accompanied by a 60-page booklet full of informative writing: Exclusively For My Friends is a treat for ears and eyes. All of the recordings on this set were made between 1963 and 1971. The sessions took place in the home of producer and MPS Records owner Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer in Germany's Black Forest--Peterson and Brunner-Schwer were friends and the pianist often visited the label owner's ...

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Album Review

Clifford Jordan: Glass Bead Games

Read "Glass Bead Games" reviewed by Robert Iannapollo

by Robert Iannapollo
March 16, 2008

Perennially underrated saxophonist Clifford Jordan recorded two of his best albums for the Strata East label and Glass Bead Games is arguably his greatest recording and one of the great albums of the 1970s. Everything is right about this date; Jordan never sounded so good, his tone rich and full, his improvisatory ideas taking the models of Coltrane and Rollins and giving them his own twist. Recorded on a “stormy Monday, October 29, 1973," it was originally issued as a ...

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Album Review

Bill Evans Trio: Everybody Digs Bill Evans

Read "Everybody Digs Bill Evans" reviewed by Samuel Chell

by Samuel Chell
September 4, 2007

This Keepnews Collection remaster/reissue of a 1959 recording is welcome if only as a reminder of Bill Evans' trio playing before the period of the celebrated Village Vanguard Sessions (Riverside, 1961). Instead of near-equal interaction by all three trio members, a supportive team of drummer Philly Joe Jones and bassist Sam Jones provides a non-intrusive backdrop for the featured performer, whose inventions are cast into bolder relief than ever. The silent spaces in the ballads are stark, inviting the listener ...

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Extended Analysis

Glass Bead Games

by Samuel Chell
August 16, 2007

"I suddenly realized that in the language of the Glass Bead Game every symbol and combination of symbols led not to single examples but into the center, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge."---Hermann HesseClifford Jordan was a soulful, powerful, deeply thoughtful Chicago tenor player who, though sought after by pianist Horace Silver and praised by fellow saxophonist Sonny Rollins, was fated to be the Lester Young of his era, misunderstood and often overlooked ...