Customer Reviews

Complete Blue Note & Savoy Masters 1944

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This is knock out material, 10 of the 22 tracks feature a quintet setting of piano, bass, electric guitar and drums with, of course, Ike out in front on tenor (probably a Conn 10m if the cover photo is anything to go by). Ike was a younger generation player who very quickly asserted himself into becoming, as the liner notes put it; `one of the most inspired and vehement followers of the Coleman Hawkins-Ben Webster style'. These small group sessions swing as hard as Ben Webster's quartet recordings made for Commodore during the same period. His mastery of the highly developed style of Hawkins-Webster is nothing short of extraordinary, especially when those giants were in peak form during the mid forties. Ike doesn't just stand alongside but projects his own vernacular into the proceedings which consists of all the most exciting elements; raunchy hard hitting swing, swaggering vibrato tossed out between complex runs and a big tone that blisters with edge. There are snatches of mellowness too but even the ballads have muscle.

All 22 tracks have J C Heard moving things along on drums and some of Ike's buddies from Cab Calloway's band (Milt Hinton plays bass on 14 tracks while Oscar Peterson and Grachan Moncur III fill the rest) keep it tight and swinging. Trumpeters include the superb Jonah Jones, Buck Clayton and Shad Collins.

These are well crafted pieces that Ike blows sky high with that lions roar of a tone, rendered all the more formidable because of the confidence and mastery of its delivery. There were only two other tenor players who managed or simply preferred to project that sound; Ben Webster (when he was in a robust, boogie mood) and Illinois Jacquet. As a tenor player myself (on a 1937 Conn 10m), I know how challenging a tone like that is to achieve. Just to cap it all, these master takes (recorded between 1944,'45,'46) have all been remastered at 24-bit and sound fantastic!