Best of Black Jazz Records

Smile With Your Heart: The Best of Bill Evans on Resonance brings together standout tracks from the company’s four sets of hitherto unheard material by the lyrical keyboard master: Live at Art D’Lugoff’s Top of the Gate (2012); Some Other Time: The Lost Session from the Black Forest (2016); Another Time: The Hilversum Concert (2017); and Evans in England (2019). Evans in England was issued for the first time as limited edition two-LP set on Record Store Day 2019, and 3 tracks from the album appear on Smile With Your Heart.

While there can be no doubt that the late great Grover Washington, Jr. released his most commercially successful recordings for Columbia and Elektra, there is also no doubt that, critically and creatively, Washington's most visionary material, the stuff that virtually created the template for the smooth jazz generations that came after, were on the Kudu imprint and produced by Creed Taylor. Washington was a monster saxophonist on tenor as well as soprano, and a true stylist. Before coming to Motown and Kudu he had apprenticed with a number of soul-jazz masters, including Charles Earland and Johnny "Hammond" Smith. The material here focuses on the seminal eight years Washington recorded for Motown and Kudu, beginning with his early renditions of standards like "I Loves You, Porgy," from George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess…

Christophe Wallemme - Start "So Many Ways…" (2008) {Bee Jazz Records Bee 026}
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© 2008 Bee Jazz Records | Bee 026
Jazz / Contemporary Jazz / Post Bop / Bass

Christophe Wallemme describes this effort as a "wink at the great standards of American jazz," a laudable objective but an affirmation that seems intended to confuse the listener. The explicit musical references on Start "So Many Ways…" point instead to Antonio Carlos Jobim and Miles Davis' Bitches Brew rather than "Body and Soul" or "My Funny Valentine." No matter.