Louis Hayes / Junior Cook Quintet

Louis Hayes / Junior Cook Quintet: At Onkel Po's Carnegie Hall: Hamburg 1976

by Chris May
March 4, 2019

In 1976, when At Onkel Po's Carnegie Hall was recorded, hard bop was viewed as nostalgia-based heritage music by the young lions of American jazz. But for drummer Louis Hayes, tenor saxophonist Junior Cook, trumpeter Woody Shaw, pianist Ronnie Matthews, and bassist Stafford James--whose paths had crossed and recrossed in bands led by Horace Silver, Art Blakey, and Julian “Cannonball" Adderley--hard bop was still the staff of life. By turns raw and blazing, flowing and balladic, At ...