Customer Reviews

Blues Book

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
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Well I bought this CD from Amazon, and with the purchase of "The Blues Book" I now have six Booker Ervin albums. Let me tell you, this one can hold its own with the best of them. Stylistically (and chronologically), it falls somewhere between "The Freedom Book" and "The Space Book," but is definitely more rooted in the blues as the title indicates. However, they are a warped, avant-blues with pianist Gildo Mahones (the first recording I have of him) adding Monk-like flourishes to put the eerie in "Eerie Dearie," the disc's first track. The album's other lengthy blues number is "No Booze Blooze," where under-recorded and underappreciated trumpeter Carmell Jones shines. (Check Carmell out on Horace Silver's classic "Song For My Father.") Unlike on "The Space Book" where the longer tracks (1 & 3) are the most exploratory, here it is the shorter tracks 2 & 4, "One for Mort" and "True Blue." As with other Prestige recordings, Ervin is ably backed by Richard Davis on bass and Alan Dawson on drums, and without these two geniuses the album would not be a classic. All of Ervin's "Books" can be judged by the cover and the contents alike.

Oliver Nelson recorded a couple of albums under the title Blues and the Abstract Truth, but leave it to Booker Ervin to really make a record worthy of such a moniker. This is the blues reduced to its most abstract formal essence, with only "No Booze Blues" even remotely evoking the downhome roots of this music. The rest of this album is very downtown, very much in line with what Coltrane and Jackie McLean and others were doing in the early sixties, without going over to the Dark Side of the avant garde. I'll admit, my confusion over just what Booker was after here made this the one album in his monunmental "Book" series that took me awhile to warm to. But, it's got many of the strengths of the series, that unmatched bass-drums duo of Richard Davis and Alan Dawson, which really simply must be heard rather than described, and that soaring, searing, crying tone of Booker's tenor. If it only had Jaki Byard, it would stand alongside The Freedom Book and The Space Book, but without him, it loses a star.

We all know that what makes jazz so distinctive and popular among other genres of non-pop music is the presence of blues in it(major difference from ragtime),This album explores the alchemy of blues on to jazz,yet paving the way for bebop drenched lines fused with the "Bluesssss",Ervin playing is very master"full",somewhat his fame owing to his dates to mingus,this cut here explores his mind in a very distinctive way.There are 4 basic blues standards which ervin makes so original and jazzy, yet drenching it with his soul! Highly recommended.