Don Ellis: Live in 32/3/4 time
In the decade before he died, aged 44, in 1978, Ellis was a major innovative force in big band jazz, influenced by Kenton, George Russell, rock, contemporary classical and Indian music. This, one of his two live mid-1960s albums, isn't as successful as Live At Monterey or the classic studio-based Electric Bath a year later, but it's graced by some extraordinary writing, notably a churning, rhythmically complex Orientation, a dissonant, foreboding Angel Eyes and a bizarre joyride over Bill Bailey, entitled Barnum's Revenge. Despite occasionally weak recording balance, the ensemble is amazing, negotiating the unusual time signatures ebulliently, while Ellis (using a four-valve trumpet for quarter-tones) is greatness personified. An uneven album, but accessible, fresh and compelling.
- Ray Comiskey
Kenny Burrell: The First Blue Note Sessions (Blue Note)
This double-CD reissue of these mid-1950s dates, Burrell's earliest under his own name for Blue Note, show him already a fully formed, mature guitarist, with an imaginative, technically secure, bop-rooted style that has remained virtually unaltered since. So has the kind of company he keeps. Here it's among the tops of the time; pianists Tommy Flanagan and Horace Silver, tenors Hank Mobley and Frank Foster, bassists Paul Chambers, Oscar Pettiford and Doug Watkins, drummers Kenny Clarke, Shadow Wilson and Louis Hayes. Burrell doesn't quite have the sheer presence of, say, Grant Green and his fecund playing is sometimes upstaged by Flanagan and Mobley, in particular, but there's a consistency of purpose and quality to the music that give it a certain charm.
- Ray Comiskey