Blues for the Bad Man

John Ellis | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 1, 2000)
• Original Release Date: January 1, 2000
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: FizzyWater
• ASIN: B00004TRYU
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #841,271 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Princess Fizzywater Song 8:11

2. Amor, Amor 8:263. Mr. Al Foster 8:064. Enigma 11:015. Lost Love 6:516. Little Rey 10:137. Blues for the Bad Man (For Miles Davis) 9:548. One for Diz (For Dizzy Gillespie) 4:39

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply Awesome, June 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Blues for the Bad Man (Audio CD)

This is simple awesome staight ahead jazz at its best, recommend this album highly.

5.0 out of 5 stars breathtakingly great, December 11, 2000

By 

John MacLeod "observer" (Guelph, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blues for the Bad Man (Audio CD)

Man, talk about yer eye-openers!

This trumpet-playing Ellis guy was a complete unknown to me until I heard this disc, but I now know that his obscurity is utterly undeserved. This is hands down one of the finest jazz recordings I have ever heard!

It's hard to know where to start... The compositions, all Ellis originals, are lyrical, singable, memorable... classically formed but not in a "heard it all before" way. And yet they leave plenty of space for exploration, which is exactly what this all-star band does. Plenty of daring sections along the lines of mid-60s Miles. And Ellis's arrangements make impressive use of bass clarinet in the ensemble passages, to give his music the sort of sinew and weight that Harry Carney gave to the Ellington orchestra -- very nice stuff!

And I'm gonna steal a riff from Randy Brecker's liner notes here and comment that the sound production and engineering on these tracks is breathtaking -- bass and drums especially emerge with distinct clarity and power, not because they've been pushed forward in the mix but because the overall sound is so crystalline. You can hear everything, it's like being there. All jazz recordings should sound so good!

My hero Chris Potter is in excellent form throughout, making sure that this envelope gets pushed. And once again we see that good things always happen when he and Al Foster work together. Everyone plays excellently and the ensemble interplay is astonishing at times... but we expect that from players of this caliber. The real surprise in this respect is leader Ellis himself; listen to him and you'll wonder why he doesn't have an equally awesome rep.

There's an intangible something in the sound of some trumpeters -- Dizzy, Clifford, Lester Bowie, Lee Morgan, classic-era Miles and Freddie Hubbard -- which declares mastery in no uncertain terms. A sound that says confidence and assurance, that says "I know what I'm doing, I got it down". John Ellis has got that thing in his horn as well, and it makes him well worthy to stand amongst these stellar musicians as a peer. The final result is a staggeringly good album which reveals new facets and depths with each listen.