Bob Katz

Most rock & roll bands are a tightly wound unit that developed their music through years of playing in garages and clubs around their hometown. Steely Dan never subscribed to that aesthetic. As the vehicle for the songwriting of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, Steely Dan defied all rock & roll conventions…

Two of Jimmy Raney’s most remarkable albums make up this set. The performances on the first feature Bob Brookmeyer, Al Cohn, and Red Mitchell, all felicitous choices, since, in addition to being compatible and inventive soloists, their presence adds to the tonal palette and avoids the similarity in tonal color of most guitar records. But Raney also shows that his superiority in the quick, alert swinging of the up tempo tunes is balanced by his lyric work on the ballads. For the second album he teamed up once again with Brookmeyer, adding Osie Johnson, Teddy Kotick, adding pianists Dick Katz and Hank Jones, who combine taste and imagination with swinging time, on four tunes each. Among the several virtues of this quality example of the art of improvisation on relatively challenging…