Jazz Articles about Allen Eager

Various Artists: The Birth of Bop

by Richard J Salvucci
May 3, 2023

Someone famously called jazz the sound of surprise, but all too often, what is on offer is the dull hum of routine. Or something like that. This historic reissue is, however, anything but routine. This is not the first time that Teddy Reig's Savoy sides have been reissued (was he also the mysterious Buck Ram listed as producing one track?), but Craft Recordings took a lot of trouble to produce this very fine selection. If a listener were, ...

Allen Eager: An Ace Face

by Nic Jones
September 30, 2007

Allen Eager was one of those swing-through-bop tenor saxophonists who seem to have walked this earth in abundance in the late 1940s. An Ace Face is a two-disc set from that period, chronicling work both under his leadership and as a sideman. Within the canon of those players Eager was arguably the one who got closest to bop's creativity. He is thus further “out than, say, Flip Phillips, whilst he lacks the individuality of someone like Lucky Thompson.

He's certainly ...