Jaspar Beck Lwhy Communism Failed

A fine bop-oriented soloist equally skilled on his cool-toned tenor and flute, Bobby Jaspar's early death from a heart ailment was a tragic loss. As a teenager, he played tenor in a Dixieland group with Toots Thielemans in Belgium. He recorded with Henri Renaud (1951 and 1953) and played with touring Americans, including Jimmy Raney, Chet Baker (1955), and his future wife Blossom Dearie…

Although he gets equal billing with the Belgian flutist Bobby Jaspar, Herbie Mann only appears on two tracks of this re-release of a pair of 1957 sessions. The session that included Mann also features Jaspar, pianist Tommy Flanagan, guitarist Joe Puma, bassist Endell Marshall and drummer Bobby Donaldson.
Though Mann's only aboard for two cuts, they make up half of the playing time, and it's a treat to hear him solo on alto flute on his own "Tutti Flutie" and to trade solos with Jaspar on Puma's "Bo-Do." It's a welcome reminder that long before he achieved crossover success and soul jazz stardom, Herbie Mann was an accomplished straight ahead player and composer, with exceptional touch and tone.

Reviewed by Shaun Dale

Former background vocalist for the likes of Melissa Manchester, Chaka Khan and Leo Sayer, American Robin Beck briefly topped the U.K. and German charts with 1988's "The First Time," a song used in a Coca-Cola commercial…

This CD reissue, which adds "The Fuzz" to the original six-song LP, is a fine showcase for Bobby Jaspar and acts as an excellent introduction to his playing. A mellow-toned tenor and a fluent flutist who was quite bop-oriented, Jaspar is featured with pianist George Wallington, bassist Wilbur Little, drummer Elvin Jones, and (on three numbers) trumpeter Idrees Sulieman. The majority of the tunes (other than "My Old Flame" and "All of You") are originals by group members, straight-ahead tunes with good blowing changes.

Recorded just a year before his death, this English album (releasing previously unknown music for the first time in 1986) is about the only one released from Bobby Jaspar's final four years.

This CD includes the early steps of Bobby Jaspar as a jazz musician, when he started on clarinet and then tenor saxophone, as he formed the young award-winning Belgian band they called “Bob Shots” —the first in Europe to play “be-bop” back in 1947 under the guidance of Jaspar's influence, Don Byas. One year later he met Lucky Thompson onstage in an enriching experience, and he became his new inspiration. These two encounters helped Bobby grow musically in a way that would make him a success everywhere, a blend of styles that was a compromise between the turbulence of Thompson, Lester Young, Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis, etc., and the rhapsodic style of Byas and Hawkins.