Review n/a

Review n/a

Virtually all of singer Babs Gonzales’ most important recordings are on this colorful CD. A pioneering bop-oriented scat singer who predated vocalese masters Eddie Jefferson, King Pleasure, and Jon Hendricks, Gonzales sang with enthusiasm and an emphasis on vowels. Babs is featured on eight numbers with his Three Bips…

Sonny Red, a fine altoist inspired by Charlie Parker and Jackie McLean, never really made it in jazz, and some of his recordings are rather uninspired. However, that does not hold true for his Blue Note album, which has been reissued on this 1996 CD along with five previously unissued selections. Red, who…

J.R. Monterose’s first session as a leader was a thoroughly enjoyable set of swinging, straight-ahead bop that revealed him as a saxophonist with a knack for powerful, robust leads in the vein of Sonny Rollins and Coleman Hawkins. With a stellar supporting group of pianist Horace Silver, trumpeter Ira…

Unjustly ignored at the time of its release, Fred Jackson’s lone album, Hootin’ ‘N Tootin’, is a thoroughly enjoyable set of funky soul-jazz with hard bop overtones. It is true that Jackson doesn’t try anything new on the set, but he proves to be a capable leader, coaxing hot,…

The aesthetic and cultural merits of Eddie Gale’s Ghetto Music cannot be overstated. That it is one of the most obscure recordings in Blue Note’s catalogue — paid for out of label co-founder Francis Wolff’s own pocket — should tell us something. This is an apocryphal album, one that…

Love it or hate it, trumpeter Eddie Gale’s second Blue Note outing as a leader is one of the most adventurous recordings to come out of the 1960s. Black Rhythm Happening picks up where Ghetto Music left off, in that it takes the soul and free jazz elements of…

Farlow is joined by second guitarist Don Arnone, bassist Clyde Lombardi, and drummer Joe Morello for three standards (“Lover,” “Flamingo” and “All Through the Night”) plus a trio of the leader’s originals during what was Farlow‘s first recording as a leader. Even at that early stage, Tal Farlow was a giant.

Among the rarest Blue Note recordings are the ones issued in the early ’50s on 10″ LPs, a format that did not catch on (being quickly overshadowed by 12″ LPs). Among the two albums that fell into the cracks were sessions by Howard McGhee (another CD has his initial Blue Note…