Jammin Uptown

Alvin Queen | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 10, 2008)
• Original Release Date: 2008
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Just a Memory
• ASIN: B0018O5X3G
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #390,037 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Europia

2. Jammin' Uptown

3. After Liberation

4. Mind Wine

5. Hear Me Drummin' [Live At Bp Jazz Club]

6. Resolution of Love

7. Hassan

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gem!, January 23, 2010

By 

JazzSundae (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jammin Uptown (Audio CD)

Sometime in the late 80's, a good friend and fellow jazz lover handed me a home mixed cassette he'd put together of various artists, something for me to listen to on my long drive home to Toronto. I popped the cassette in the car player and the first few tracks knocked me out. My friend had provided no track listings or any other information on the cassette. I played the mystery tape all the way home and thereafter, for weeks on end, I played and rewound that tape so much that it finally snapped. In despair, I phoned my friend and tried to describe the music... straightahead, strong, hard-driving and muscular, something like a Blakey band, but not Blakey, killer horns and arrangements, incredible drumming... it didn't help though, that I couldn't name even one of the tracks. Maybe they were all originals? My friend couldn't remember what was on the tape but told me that if I could find the music in his record collection, he'd make me another one.

A few months later on my next visit, my friend, true to his word, let me search through his thousands of albums. I must have been in his music room for hours, looking at album covers, reading sidemen listings, trying to be neat and keep his albums in good order, grateful that my fussy audiophile friend trusted me to handle his albums like this... I was, however, determined to hear that wonderful music again, and I wasn't leaving that music room until I found it. Finally, I spotted an album with a picture of a young man with a wide, toothy grin, with drum cases behind him. The instrumentation looked right... hopeful, I put it on the turntable and BAM that was it!! Alvin Queen, Jammin' Uptown.

It's been over 20 years since I discovered the masterful drummer Alvin Queen and this great album, and not having heard Jammin' Uptown for quite a few years, I purchased the cd reissue. The music is as powerful and invigorating as I remember it, a true treat for the ears. It can't possibly miss, with masters like the late, great John Hicks at the piano, Terrence Blanchard on trumpet, Robin Eubanks on trombone, Manny Boyd on saxophones, Ray Drummond on bass and the inimitable Alvin Queen on drums! A treasure, very highly recommended! Linda Goshay Jones