Mood Indigo M.alsop

Taft Jordan - Mood Indigo (1960) {Prestige PRCD-24230-2 rel 1999}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 406 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 164 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 15 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1960-61, 1999 Prestige / Fantasy | PRCD-24230-2
Jazz / Bop / Mainstream / Trumpet

1999 was the year of the Ellington Centennial, and, as such, the Maestro's music was very much in the air. It was also an ideal year in which to reissue Taft Jordan's first-rate, long-deleted tribute to the Duke, Mood Indigo. It's paired with a fine, equally rare set by the Swingville All-Stars, with Jordan on trumpet. An Ellingtonian from 1943 to '47, Jordan renders some choice material by his ex-boss. Long a first-call New York session man, he's as impressive on open horn as with a mute. Here he's surrounded by two empathetic but distinctly different groups: a younger, more boppish quintet that numbers guitarist Kenny Burrell, and a sextet–whose program offers two more tunes from the Ellington band's voluminous book–featuring three other Ducal alumni (the other horns, plus bassist Wendell Marshall). Mood Indigo recalls the manifold gifts of a trumpeter who seldom recorded as a leader.

Nina Simone was only 25 years old in 1958 when she entered Beltone Studios in midtown Manhattan for a one-day recording session for her debut album, Little Girl Blue,on Bethlehem Records. The 14 songs she recorded that day reveal just how well developed Simone’s sound — her powerhouse vocals, her classically-trained piano-playing, her inventive, genre-blind arrangements, and her dynamic personality — already was. Bethlehem, a small and financially faltering jazz label, picked 11 tracks for Little Girl Blue. This unheralded debut yielded Simone’s biggest hit, a cover of the Gershwins’ “Porgy (I Loves You, Porgy),” as well as her last one, “My Baby Just Cares for Me,” which charted in 1987 after being used in a TV commercial.

Nina Simone's legendary early recordings Including My Baby Just Cares For Me,' Porgy (I Loves You Porgy),' Love Me Or Leave Me,' & Mood Indigo'.

Jazz pianist Beegie Adair's series of "romantic songs" songbook albums, devoted to the major songwriters of the interwar era (there are also titles for George Gershwin, Hoagy Carmichael, Irving Berlin, and Richard Rodgers), tend to have photographs of affectionate couples on the covers, as does this one, featuring the music of Duke Ellington. That's a signal that the recordings are intended to accompany the listeners on their own romantic adventures, as much as express the feelings of the songwriters.