Peter And Will Anderson: Featuring Jimmy Cobb

Grammy Award-winning saxophonists and identical twins, Peter and Will Anderson document another burner of a recording on their Featuring Jimmy Cobb album, released within days of the passing of the legendary drummer in May 2020.

The last surviving member of the Miles Davis band that recorded the ground-breaking jazz album Kind of Blue (Columbia, 1959), Jimmy Cobb passed away at age 91. While not originally designed as a tribute project, this album may well be one of the last recordings featuring Cobb, as his last album as leader, This I Dig of You (Smoke Sessions Records, 2019), was released in 2019.

The Anderson brothers craft an exciting session of music, mixing six new originals and four standards in which each piece is a keeper. Accompanying Will, on alto saxophone, and brother Peter, on tenor sax, are Jeb Patton on the piano, David Wong on bass and, of course, Jimmy Cobb. The band opens in blistering fashion, cooking through the first four originals: "Two for One," "Hot and Cold," "Blues for You," and "Rhythm In F," where the bebop and hard bop sounds paint this canvas red hot.

There are two relative soft spots on this album with the first belonging to the Anderson treatment of the Vernon Duke classic "Autumn In New York." On "Someday My Prince Will Come," and the time-honored standard from Duke Pearson, "Jeanine," the boys are wild with phenomenal call and response performances.

The Jimmy Van Heusen standard "Polka Dots & Moonbeams," occupies the other mellow piece of the set with Will teeing off on the alto, marking this rendition of the piece as one of the finest. The brothers play in unison on the final track, "I'll Tell You Later," capping off an incredible session of hard-core bebop the way it was intended to be performed.

The rhythm section, and especially Cobb, provide an amazing performance. As for the twins, we've heard the phrase "brothers in arms." Well, in this case it's "brothers in bebop," for Will and Peter Anderson Featuring Jimmy Cobb is one outstanding recording and remembrance of a legend.