Stitt's Bits

Great straight work from the legendary Sonny Stitt - recording here in a mode that's different than his funky sides of the time - and a lot more back to basics! The group's a quintet - as Sonny blows both tenor and alto, with help from Joe Newman on trumpet, Duke Jordan on piano, Sam Jones on bass, and Roy Brooks on drums - and excellent combo who really keep things interesting.

In another of those two-fers that are going to tangle discographies for some time to come, this bears the title of a Don Patterson album, The Boss Men, and includes all of the material from that LP. However, this CD, though it's also called The Boss Men, is billed to both Sonny Stitt and Don Patterson, and combines the original Patterson The Boss Men LP with another album cut in 1965, Night Crawler, that was billed to Sonny Stitt, although it featured the exact same lineup (Stitt on alto sax, Patterson on organ, Billy James on drums) as The Boss Men. Not only that, the CD adds two cuts from a Patterson 1964 LP, Patterson's People, also featuring the Stitt-Patterson-James trio. As for the original The Boss Men, it's a respectable straight-ahead jazz-with-organ session…