Customer Reviews

Jackie Mclean & Company

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Jackie McLean will be 70 next year.He's still alive,although he had several troubles with drugs for years; still alive and playing,beeing with Frank Morgan,Donald Byrd,Freddie Hubbard and some others a survivor of the hard bop era.During the sixties, he recorded for Blue Note some of the greatest treasuries of this label ("right now","let freedom ring","destination out").This record shows McLean in great company : Bill Hardman on trumpet,Mal Waldron on piano,Doug Watkins on bass,Art Taylor on drums and Ray Draper on tuba.As always, McLean's playing is outstanding,as you can listen to,for example, at the beginning of "Help".The blues is here,everywhere in this session.Bill Hardman,an underrated player who worked with Art Blakey and Junior Cook,and who ended his life in the Belleville quarter of Paris,France,in 1993,plays with great taste.Bill was a small,gentle man,who came to Paris I think at the end of the eighties.He lived here,with his wife and his lovely little daughter,until his untimely death at 59 or 60.I happened to know him shortly before his death,and I remember him having troubles using the subway in Paris and saying "I'll never find my way around this f..... place !".Bill has often been associated to McLean,and they both played with Art Blakey;this music,mostly hanging around the blues,with minor-keyed tunes,is a real delight for all hard bop lovers.Ray Draper's "minor dream" is a marvelous tune, very close to Benny Golson's compositions.
Maybe it's not Jackie McLean's greatest album,but it's a beautiful session you'll sure enjoy.

A fine blowing session that hightlights the strange contrast between Mclean's alto sax and the tuba of Ray Draper on the first three songs. An excellent together group with some great soloing and arrangements.

This is a full of color album. The reason is about the instrument's contrast. Mclean's sax is the frontal line the most of the time, with Hardman on trumpet, but their higher notes are well balanced with an extraordinary tuba player: Ray Drapper (who was so young at this time). Bass and drums are not particularly intenses, intended as solo-interpretations, but are always developing a great rythm -section. Special words must be dedicated to the great Mal Waldron, who knows how to improvise smartly, smoothly, and speculating on the scale's possibilities so great.