Customer Reviews

Master Class

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This album is nothing less than a master class in bebop improvisation. Hank Jones has so much talent, chops, musicality that be bop seems an easy language in his hands. This style of music is so vital after 60 years. Modal, free, third stream, avant garde, fusion things didn't thrown a bit dust on this music. The genius of Charlie Parker, Dizzie Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell (and I could continue for hours...) is immortal. If you want to know what bebop is about, and how to play it with true musicality, just listen to this album (they're two actually packed in one cd). It's a late seventies album, but the flame was still alive. And still it is ....
Listen, and listen, and listen, and listen, and listen again..........

Hank Jones was there just about at the beginning of bebop and superbly qualified to play these two sets of "bop's best hits." One half is trio and the other quintet with his brother Thad and Charlie Rouse who played tenor with Monk. In the 1970s there were no Hank Jones recordings available (with the exception of the historic sides for Savoy) and jazz was pretty much in disarray as rock overwhelmed all other music. But Hank Jones came back like the cat with nine lives and although the liner notes for the original recordings (1978 and 1979 I think) make a comment about "still" going strong, or some such thing as though he were an ancient, Hank Jones outlived almost all his contemporaries and died only recently just as his last recording with Charlie Haden was being released. By all means get this outstanding CD. Every track is a definitive statement. Great music by great musicians.