Buddy DeFranco "The Buenos Aires Concerts"
HEP CD 2014 U8rnins Dial a trackcode 1201 Stan Getz
"Blue Skies" Concord CCD 4676 (43 mins) Dial a track code 1311
Cannonball Adderley "Sophisticated Swing"
Verve 528 408 2 (2 CDs 158 mins) Dial a track code 1421
When clarinettist Buddy DeFranco visited Buenos Aires for three concerts in 1980, few could have predicted the classic which resulted. Argentina is hardly the hub of the jazz universe and the supporting group Jorge Navarro (piano). Richard Lew (guitar), Jorge Lopez Ruiz (bass) and Osvaldo Lopez (drums) was unknown. But the results were classics of mainstream/bop jazz, with DeFranco in luminous form and his Argentinian colleagues proving a brilliant rhythm section. On the blues, Billie's Bounce, the bossa Triste, Jerome Kern's Yesterdays and the up tempo Scrapple From The Apple, DeFranco is on unbelievable form, more than ably answered by Navarro and Lew.
There's not a weak track on this wonderful CD of joyous music. Almost as seductive is the first issue of a January 1982 session of one of tenor Stan Getz's finest groups a quartet completed by Jim McNeely (piano), Marc Johnson (bass) and Billy Hart (drums). This was a great period for Getz here focused mainly on ballads like Spring Is Here, Fast Living, How Long Has This Been Going On? and Johnson's lovely Antigny. Both he and McNeely are the session's lyric focal points.
Altoist Cannonball Adderley is the centre of the Verve double covering four 196 58 small group sessions long unavailable Sophisticated Swing, Cannonball's Sharpshooters, Cannonball Enroute and brother Nat's To The Ivy League From Nat. This is a good documentation of a fine quintet which relied heavily on the soloing of the brothers and their music's comparative accessibility.
Supreme time Dizzy Gillespie
Dizzy Gillespie "Birk's Works"
Verve 527 900 2 (2CDs 159 mins) Dial a track code 1531
Clarke Boland Big Band "Three Latin Adventures"
MPS529095 2
Dial a track code 1641
Maynard Ferguson "These Cats Can Swing"
Concord CCD 4669 (60 mins)
Dial a track code 1751
The Irish Jazz Orchestra "Gravity Still Works"
Coyote 003 (57 mins)
Dial a track code 1861
Some superior big band jazz, with a couple of vintage reissues, a new Maynard Ferguson and an exciting Irish release, is led by Gillespie's 1967 orchestra with three LPs Birk's Works, Dizzy in Greece and World Statesman on a CD double. This was a supreme time for orchestral Gillespie. His bands included Lee Morgan, Quincy Jones. Joe Gordon, Al Grey, Rod Levitt, Phil Woods, Billy Mitchell, Wynton Kelly and arrangers Melba Liston, Benny Golson and Quincy Jones all played with the band. It makes for splendid jazz, with an abundance of good solo and section work and an essential compilation in the Gillespie canon.
Just as indispensable are the CBBB's latin excursions, dating from 1968, which show this impeccable, yet fiery orchestra at the top of its form in, challenging material. In every W this is magisterial stuff the themes and arrangements are first class, the section work awesomely accurate and the soloing notably by Dusko Goykovich, Sahib Shihab, Ronnie Scott, Johnny Griffin, Phil Woods, Tony Coe, Benny Bailey and Ake Persson utterly memorable. Of the three "adventures", the excellent Latin Kaleidoscope and Cuban Fever are even eclipsed by one of the finest of all jazz suites, Boland's Fellini 712.
Trumpeter Ferguson's Big Bop Nouveau group is not in that class, but it's a good example of his current form. His band is crisp, the leader stratospheric and he has some good young players around him.
Despite some rough edges and understandably no soloists of CBBB calibre, the Irish Jazz Orchestra still sounds good in this company. Recorded live last March and jointly supported, inter alia, by the Arts Councils North and South, it lives up, on recording, to the impression it created live. It's fine orchestral jazz which needs no indulgence to be enjoyed for what it is.
