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Wayne Shorter: Super Nova
by Robert Spencer
It was the summer of 1969, flower power was in the air, conventional hard bop was in serious trouble, and Wayne Shorter wrought the hipfest Super Nova in the company of a gaggle of guitarists and percussionists. Super Nova , while typical in many ways of jazz in 1969, is by no means the ...
Wayne Shorter: Odyssey of Iska
by Robert Spencer
Exotic percussion-based proto-World Music worked for Wayne Shorter on Super Nova, so he tried it again the next year (1970) on Odyssey of Iska. The sound is very similar but the lineup completely different: here Wayne plays tenor and soprano; unlike Super Nova, where he stuck exclusively to soprano. Dave Friedman plays vibes and ...
Charlie Hunter Quartet: Natty Dread
by Douglas Payne
From the surprisingly successful Blue Note Cover Series comes this exceptional disc by multi-talented eight-string guitarist Charlie Hunter. The 29-year old Hunter has made a thankfully unpredictable choice “covering" Bob Marley's influential and popular 1974 reggae classic Natty Dread. Hunter, heard here in a quartet with an alto, tenor sax and drums, resists the urge toward ...
Kenny Dorham: Whistle Stop
by Robert Spencer
If you’re looking for “straight ahead" jazz (in near-perfect form), here it is. Kenny Dorham plays here with the burning rhythm section John Coltrane used on Blue Train : Kenny Drew on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Philly Joe Jones on drums. Hank Mobley adds his tenor sax to this 1961 session that features Kenny ...
Bobby Hutcherson: Live in Montreux
by Robert Spencer
Did you catch Bobby Hutcherson in the movie Round Midnight with Dexter Gordon? Hutcherson played another musician: a comparatively well-adjusted, kindly one. I had the impression watching that movie that being well-adjusted and kindly was not particularly a stretch for Bobby Hutcherson; that conclusion is supported by the music on this album. This CD captures Hutcherson's ...
Lou Donaldson: Mr. Shing-A-Ling
by Douglas Payne
This October 27, 1967, recording was always the best of Lou Donaldson's funky albums. It's just amazing -- given the material and the awful cover art -- that Blue Note put this back into circulation at all. If for nothing else, Mr. Shing-A-Ling is worth the investment for the ultra-funking “Peepin'" alone (featured for the first ...
The Three Sounds: Babe's Blues
by Douglas Payne
Bravo for pianist Gene Harris, who seems to have recently and belatedly been discovered. After churning out dozens of fine records in the 1960s for Blue Note, Verve, Mercury and Limelight, then drowning in funk and disco records in the 1970s, he finally gave it all up and retired to Idaho. Bassist Ray Brown coaxed him ...
Jackie McLean: New and Old Gospel
by Robert Spencer
After Jackie Mac praised Ornette to the skies for a few years, pronounced him his new inspiration, and started tending toward the free thing on his own albums, their fateful meeting finally occured in 1967: Jackie McLean and Ornette Coleman together, with Lamont Johnson on piano, Scott Holt on bass, and the redoubtable Billy Higgins from ...
Ornette Coleman: The Empty Foxhole
by Robert Spencer
Denardo Coleman, son of the free jazz master, is now forty years old and has been playing drums for thirty-four years. The virtuosity that he has developed over these years can be heard to best advantage on his father's two new albums of 1996, Sound Museum: Three Women and Sound Museum: Hidden Man. His playing has ...
Jimmy McGriff: Electric Funk
by Douglas Payne
This 1969 Sonny Lester production was one nearly hopelessly lost slab of solid funk. It often popped up in cut-out bins when records were still waxed. When used-record stores started disappearing, beauties like this started vanishing too. But Blue Note's blessed Rare Groove series has exhumed all 32 minutes of this hard-hitting fon-kee gem (and, to ...
