Tina Brooks True Blue (1960) {audio Wave Xrcd24 Awmxr 0004} [repost]

Like many of his peers, Tina Brooks life was cut short by a drug overdose. However in the short time he was with us, he recorded some phenomenal stuff. This is by far his best album under his name, with songs that both flow from the bop days, yet maintain such a timelss quality that they seem current today. Truly no jazz/Blue Note collection is complete without this disk!

One of the only sessions tenor sax player Tina Brooks ever led during his short career, this 1960 recording features a superb studio lineup including trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, Duke Jordan on piano, Sam Jones on bass and Art Taylor on drums. An accomplished songwriter, Brooks wrote every tune here except for one.

One of the only sessions tenor sax player Tina Brooks ever led during his short career, this 1960 recording features a superb studio lineup including trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, Duke Jordan on piano, Sam Jones on bass and Art Taylor on drums. An accomplished songwriter, Brooks wrote every tune here except for one.

Classic 1960 Blue Note release from pianist Horace Parlan. Features saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, bassist George Tucker and drummer Al Harewood. The improvement in sound quality of XRCD over a conventional CD is not subtle. Obvious gains in clarity, transparency, dynamics and warmth of XRCD can be heard by all. XRCD allows the listener to hear what the producer and artist intended to hear, the sound of the original master tape. Plays on standard CD players.

Leonard Feather once famously described Hank Mobley as 'the middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone.' Middleweights never get much respect. But before drugs and general dissipation got him, Mobley recorded some albums for Blue Note in the 1960s that make time stand still. Soul Station exemplifies the suave, flowing melodicism and erotic rhythmic subtlety that made Mobley unique. With a rhythm section for the ages behind him, Mobley delivers profundities of soul and swing now gone from planet Earth. This Audio Wave reissue uses JVC's XRCD24 mastering and manufacturing technologies and gets you closest to Blue Note's master tapes.

Recorded in 1958, this legendary date with the still-undersung Sonny Clark in the leader's chair also featured a young Jackie McLean on alto (playing with a smoother tone than he had before or ever did again), trumpeter Art Farmer, and the legendary rhythm section of bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Philly Joe Jones, both from the Miles Davis band. The set begins with one of the preeminent "swinging medium blues" pieces in jazz history: the title track with its leveraged fours and eights shoved smoothly up against the walking bass of Chambers and the backbeat shuffle of Jones.

Lou Donaldson and the Three Sounds both had a tendency to slip into low-key grooves, which is what makes the hard-driving bop of the opener "Three Little Words" a little startling. Donaldson is at a fiery peak, spinning out Bird-influenced licks that nevertheless illustrate that he's developed a more rounded, individual style of his own. The Three Sounds are equally as impressive, working bop rhythms with a dexterity that their first albums only hinted at.

The title of this Blue Note set, Doin' Allright, fit perfectly at the time, for tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon was making the first of three successful comebacks. Largely neglected during the 1950s, Gordon's Blue Note recordings (of which this was the first) led to his rediscovery.

Although this Blue Note session (reissued on CD in 1996) is led by trumpeter Johnny Coles, pianist Duke Pearson (who contributed the arrangements and five of the six compositions) really functioned as leader. The typically impressive Blue Note lineup (which includes Leo Wright on alto and flute, tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, bassist Bob Cranshaw, and either Walter Perkins or Pete LaRoca on drums, in addition to Coles and Pearson) handles the obscure material with creative invention.