Customer Reviews

Proof Positive

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

I first picked up this album on vinyl (mono no less) well over 30 years ago. I still have and cherish it. I was an aspiring trombonist, and as a kid I'd heard about J.J. Johnson. He was the best there was with a slide. The jazz I heard was infectious, lively, inspiring. J.J. gives us some of the finest trombone improvizations I've ever heard in my many years of listening to jazz. I still can't play trombone, but I know a great one when it's played. This is it!

Just turn down the lights, turn up the volume or put on the headphones. Immerse yourself in the building, swelling interpretation J.J. gives. Like good classical music, this isn't simply to be "heard" as background music. Dive into it and let it take you for the ride of your life. His work on Neo, Minor Blues and Blues Waltz are unforgettable.

I first picked up this album on vinyl (mono no less) well over 30 years ago. I still have and cherish it. I was an aspiring trombonist, and as a kid I'd heard about J.J. Johnson. He was the best there was with a slide. The jazz I heard was infectious, lively, inspiring. J.J. gives us some of the finest trombone improvizations I've ever heard in my many years of listening to jazz. I still can't play trombone, but I know a great one when it's played. This is it!

Just turn down the lights, turn up the volume or put on the headphones. Immerse yourself in the building, swelling interpretation J.J. gives. Like good classical music, this isn't simply to be "heard" as background music. Dive into it and let it take you for the ride of your life. His work on Neo, Minor Blues and Blues Waltz are unforgettable.

You can't go wrong here, as this CD is brilliant from start to finish. JJ's accomplishments only become more impressive with the passage of time, and this is as good a place as any to enjoy the depth of his musical gifts.

Just because ABC Impulse was John Coltrane's label as he took his music, and a good fraction of jazz, into outer space, does not mean the royal Black And Orange was only a free jazz label.

If you want Proof Positive--I love it when album titles make my transitions for me-get this JJ Johnson album. The hard bop here is amazingly played if not unique in format. Listen to any of the tracks, the Latin "Neo" or--here we go with JJ doing my writing for me again, the self-explanatory "Minor Blues," and you'll here how Johnson pushes this music. He may be playing in traditional forms, but what a player. He pushes all this material forward, drives it hard. When he is pumping that big brass valve, heads down.

Speaking of players, you have Richard Davis, Toots Thelleman, and half the great Coltrane Quintet, Elvin Jones and McCoy Tyner. And that to me may be the most interesting aspect of Proof Positive: a jazz musician could be playing the most out of out one day, and doing a gig like this the next, all under Rudy Van Gelder's roof.

What an era.