al Haig Jerome Kern

In a three-year period, Stan Getz played with bands featuring either pianist Duke Jordan or a young Horace Silver. This is the boppin' Getz on tenor, playing standards fervently. There are two Gigi Gryce originals, the Getz original "Hershey Bar," and Silver's "Penny" among the 24 tracks. This is a decent introduction to the pre-bossa nova player the world would later know.

Jerome Kern's stage tunes – going back to the late '20s with the acclaimed presentation Show Boat – right up to the '40s, will forever be at the core of quintessential American popular songs that hold a dear place in the heart of all straight-ahead jazz performers. Oscar Peterson's immortal trio with bassist Ray Brown and drummer Ed Thigpen play Kern's themes expertly, with no small degree of interpretation, and a clever angle on these well-worn songs that only Peterson can self-identify with his genius mindset. The title should be more accurately "The Jerome Kern & Friends Songbook," as he always co-wrote with such notables as Oscar Hammerstein II, Otto Harbach, Ira Gershwin, and Dorothy Fields, but these are all instrumental versions of his priceless musical scores and are immediately familiar without lyrics.

The Silver Lining: The Songs of Jerome Kern functions as something of an answer to its predecessor, Cheek to Cheek. That 2014 duet album with Lady Gaga was suitably brassy and snazzy, relying on well-loved standards and pizzazz – the kind of thing designed to stoke nostalgia vibes – but The Silver Lining is a purer jazz record, an intimate songbook collaboration with pianist Bill Charlap; the difference can be heard simply in comparing the versions of "I Won't Dance" that pop up on the two albums – the Gaga swings boldly, the Charlap rendition carries a wry resignation. Songbooks have been a standard item for Bennett throughout the years but if The Silver Lining recalls any specific album in the vocalist's discography, it's The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album, a record released in 1975 when Bennett dropped off the major-label radar and his name was perhaps as well-known to record buyers as that of Evans.

Al Haig - Al Haig Today! (1965) {Mint Records Japan Mini LP XQAM-1635 rel 2014}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 87 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 72 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 11 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1965, 2014 Del Moral Records / Mint Records Japan | XQAM-1635 | DSD remaster
Jazz / Bop / Jazz Piano Trio

This difficult to find recording is worth the search; it contains some of the finest recorded work of Al Haig's enigmatic career. Haig was an important figure in the early development of bebop piano and can be heard as a sideman on many seminal recordings from the 1940s, including Salt Peanuts and Hot House. His refined classical technique was relatively unique at the time, and he was admired as a superb accompanist. Between the mid-'50s and the early 1970s there is a curiously large gap in his recorded output evidently due to personal problems. In fact, Al Haig Today! appears to be his only release as a leader during the '60s.