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2.0 out of 5 stars
A footnote in US-French relations...., June 14, 2009
This review is from: All Stars (Audio CD)
Henri Renaud was a passable but essentially mediocre pianist who nevertheless won a small place in the history of European and American jazz for his efforts to record American bop players (some of whom weren't yet all that famous even in their home market) and introduce them to French audiences still in the relative 'dark ages' of New Orleans jazz. Renaud's best known for hearing the potential of Clifford Brown early on and recording him. This particularly album, meanwhile, is a 1954 session with Renaud jamming with Milt Jackson, J.J. Johnson and Al Cohn. Alas, the rhythm section Renaud leads with Percy Heath on bass and Charlie Smith on drums is firmly locked in the metronomic mode -- Smith is in the slapping-a-cardboard-box school of drummers and the three of them would have made a plodding swing-era rhythm section. They were way below what the bop and hard bop players of the time were already doing. This puts the spotlight squarely on the three "All-Stars" and, alas, their work on this session was utterly unspectacular. Despite Renaud's efforts to help this music find a receptive audience in France, these sides are really nothing to write home about. An historical curio, at best.
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