March 7, 2019
The obscure music on this CD has rarely been reissued. Pianist Wynton Kelly is heard with a trio (Franklin Skeete or Oscar Pettiford on bass and drummer Lee Abrams) at the age of 19 when he was working as an accompanist for Dinah Washington. Featured on this recording a year before he joined Dizzy Gillespie and seven years before his next date as a leader, Kelly in 1951 was already long on his way to achieving his own sound. Influenced most by Bud Powell but also displaying some of the joy of Teddy Wilson’s style along with his own chord voicings, Kelly gives listeners no hints on this enjoyable CD (which has two complete sessions plus three alternate takes) that he was still a teenager. Piano Interpretations was reissued on an import-only Japanese CD in 2000.] ~ Scott Yanow
