Dave Beal

Spyro Gyra's first album for MCA after their longtime label, GRP-Crescendo, was absorbed into its corporate parent, 1990's Fast Forward carries the curious band subtitle "featuring Jay Beckenstein." Saxophonist Beckenstein has certainly always been the band's leader, writing a good chunk of the material and producing the albums, but given that the lineup is basically unchanged from the previous few Spyro Gyra albums, the new nomenclature is puzzling. It also goes against Spyro Gyra's entire musical aesthetic, as the group's unabashedly commercial and melodic style works against the traditional jazz concept of soloists and sidemen. Everyone on Fast Forward plays the melody, the whole melody, and nothing but the melody, with no improvisations or sidebars.

This second installment in the excellent Classics Helen Humes chronology covers the exciting material she recorded for the Philo (soon to become Aladdin), Black & White, and Mercury labels, first with her All-Stars in Los Angeles during 1945-1946 and then with Buck Clayton's band in New York in 1946 and 1947. Alternating between ballads, blues, and boogie-woogie, the singer exudes a wonderful passionate glow that sometimes borders on the sensual. The front lines of her West Coast bands were richly staffed with excellent players in trumpeter Snooky Young and saxophonists Willie Smith, Tom Archia, Corky Corcoran, Maxwell Davis, Wild Bill Moore, and - fresh out of the Army - Lester Young…