Customer Reviews

Very Saxy

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This album augments Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis's working band--Shirley Scott on organ, George Duvivier on bass, Arthur Edgehill on drums--with a peerless array of tenor saxophonists. Coleman Hawkins's appearance here ups the ante considerably, given that all the other players--Davis, Arnett Cobb & Buddy Tate--are indelibly indebted to his pioneering work on the tenor. But Lester Young is another presence here, albeit a ghostly one: he'd died just a month earlier, & there's a splendid all-in version of "Lester Leaps In" which can't help but be a memorial to the great man.

The material here is uncomplicated: contrafacts on "Sweet Georgia Brown" & "I Got Rhythm", & a few different versions of the blues. But there's nothing slack about the playing: each saxophonist plays his part to the hilt, & one gets a fine sense of the different styles of the players, from the wonderfully grumpy & swaggering tone of Hawkins to the sheer elegance of Tate. My only regret with this album is the absence of a ballad feature: surely that would have been an excellent showcase? Oh well: no matter, as what's here is fine enough. This is an unpretentious, unfussy album which provides an evocative summing-up of the first generation of tenor saxophonists, even as the same label (Prestige) was busy releasing the work of a saxophonist, John Coltrane, who was already forging ahead way past it....

You don't get much better than this...

Four "big sound" hard swinging tenors rockin' and wailing out with Eddie Lockjaw and his crack tight heavy groovin' rhythm section featuring Shirley Scott on Organ ! ! !

Somewhere between the swing heavy phrasing of bop and the juke box rockin' R & B that later evolved into rock were guys like Eddie Lockjaw, Buddy Tate, Coleman Hawkings and Arnett Cobb - - masters of everything big (...that's what you get when you come from Texas as several of these guys did...) - - big tone, big swing, big rhythm.

The tunes on this album are agressive toe tapping blowing sessions drenched with lot's of blues and soul... and some pretty darn smooth walking and swinging by the rhythm section (George Duvivier on bass, Arthur Edgehill on drums.) Edgehill's drumming is interesting because he's clearly deep in the groove... a bebopper yet rock solid time keeper delivering an unforgetably strong lock on Shirley's comp as well the soloists phrasing... In many ways the session is his ! ! !

Recorded in 1959 and released on the prestige label, Rudy Van Gelder's legendary engineering skills take you back in time... you can almost feel the spit and breath of the players coming from their reeds, that's how warm and sharp it is.

I wish every Jazz musician I ever had to play with studied this album intensely, but for some reason I suspect its not "recommended listening" on most of those Berkeley wannabe's "must have" spin lists !