Gene Und Stammbume

The executives at Prestige must have been felt ecstatic when they heard Gene Ammons first play after his release from a very severe seven-year jail sentence. The great tenor proved to still be in his prime, his huge sound was unchanged and he was hungry to make new music. This CD, which completely reissues the first two LPs Ammons cut after his return (The Boss Is Back! and Brother Jug!) rewards repeated listenings. The first date (in an acoustic quintet with pianist Junior Mance) hints at his earlier bop-based music while the numbers from the following day (with organist Sonny Phillips) find Ammons playing over a couple of boogaloo vamps very much of the period. Actually it is his ballad statements (particularly "Here's That Rainy Day," "Feeling Good" and even "Didn't We") that really make this CD memorable, although on "He's a Real Gone Guy" Ammons shows that he had not forgotten how to jam the blues either.

This superb album solidified pianist Gene Harris' return to the jazz major leagues. Teamed up with bassist Ray Brown, drummer Mickey Roker, and tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, Harris stretches out on such songs as Ray Brown's blues "Gene's Lament," "Things Ain't What They Used to Be," "Yours Is My Heart Alone," and "Battle Hymn of the Republic." Harris and Turrentine work together so well on this soulful blues/bop date that one wishes they had teamed up much more often.

This is an odd album, mostly owing to the widely differing sounds represented on it. Though often credited exclusively to Gene Chandler, about half of it is comprised of Chandler's work with the Dukays, the group of which he was a part until the release of "Duke of Earl" (which was a Dukays recording released as a Chandler solo single). The Dukays material is fine if relatively undistinguished late-'50s R&B harmony vocal material, mostly consisting of pleasant romantic ballads. Chandler's work, by contrast, casts him in a mode very similar to Ben E. King's immediate post-Drifters recordings (he even does "Stand by Me" here). There's a considerable chasm between the doo wop and the solo sides, and some listeners might even get dizzy after a few switches back and forth. And the album is dominated by the later tracks, circa 1965, most notably "Turn on Your Love Light," where Chandler moves into the upbeat soul sound that would carry him from the mid-'60s all the way through into the 1970s (and a professional rendezvous with Curtis Mayfield). The sound is excellent, and if you can take the switches in style and mood, this is a fun album. [The original 12-song album has been reissued on CD in Japan under the same title and with the same cover art, with audiophile sound and five bonus cuts drawn from deeper in the Vee-Jay library.]

Pianist Gene Harris' 1992 quartet (with guitarist Ron Eschete, bassist Luther Hughes, and drummer Harold Jones) explores ten wide-ranging selections on this CD. But despite the very different chord changes, they are able to infuse the music with so much soul that the results are consistently bluesy. Among the tunes that Harris and his group explore are Horace Silver's "Strollin'", "Until the Real Thing Comes Along," "Jeannine", "You Make Me Feel So Young", and "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams". An excellent effort.

The seventh CD in the Classics label's Gene Krupa reissue series is mostly fairly weak. Despite Krupa's presence, his band at the time was average (only trumpeter Shorty Sherock had much of a reputation as a soloist) and, of the 21 selections on this disc, only three are instrumentals. Irene Daye's nine vocals are certainly listenable, although Howard Dulany's seven ballad features are more routine; Daye and Dulany take "You Forgot About Me" as a vocal duet. The instrumentals ("Hamtramck," "Full Dress Hop" and an excellent version of "Sweet Georgia Brown") are fine, but this CD is only recommended to completists.