THE NEW MILES DAVIS QUINTET: ‘Miles’ (Craft Recordings/Prestige)
Though its front cover – a garish, green-tinted, tree-lined river scene photographed in winter – seemed unremittingly bleak and left a lot to be desired artistically, Miles, the 1956 debut album by The New...
LIGHTNIN’ HOPKINS WITH SONNY TERRY: ‘Last Night Blues’ (Craft Recordings/Bluesville)
Established by Rudy Van Gelder, an optometrist turned visionary sound boffin and audio engineer, Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, was the go-to recording destination for Blue Note, the iconic New York...
KENNY BURRELL & JOHN COLTRANE: ‘Kenny Burrell & John Coltrane’ (Craft Recordings)
Although recorded in March 1958 for Prestige’s New Jazz imprint, guitarist Kenny Burrell and saxophonist John Coltrane’s self-titled collaboration album was shelved and didn’t surface until 1963, when both musicians’ careers were going in...
HAMPTON HAWES: ‘For Real!’ (Craft Recordings)
1958 was an unforgettable year for bebop pianist Hampton Hawes, but mainly for the wrong reason; on his 30th birthday in November of that year, he was arrested by the police for heroin possession...
RED GARLAND TRIO: ‘Groovy’ (Craft Recordings)
A key if sometimes overlooked member of the groundbreaking Miles Davis Quintet in the 1950s, Texas-born William “Red” Garland played with a delicacy that belied the fact that he had once been a competitive...
BILL EVANS: ‘Everybody Digs Bill Evans’ (Riverside/Contemporary Records)
1959 was a remarkable year in the history of modern jazz because it yielded four highly influential and enduringly popular albums: Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue, Charles Mingus’ Mingus Ah Um, Dave Brubeck’s Time...
ART PEPPER: ‘Smack Up’ (Contemporary/Craft Recordings)
Craft Recordings’ exploration of the Contemporary Records’ catalogue continues with this magnificent vinyl reissue of alto saxophonist Art Pepper’s 1960 album, Smack Up, regarded as one of the archetypal examples of West Coast jazz....
ISAAC HAYES: ‘Hot Buttered Soul’ (Enterprise/Craft Recordings)
“When I started out doing my thing, what I had to say couldn’t be said in 2 minutes and 30 seconds… so out of that came the long cuts,” Isaac Hayes told this writer...
PHINEAS NEWBORN, JR: ‘A World Of Piano!’ (Craft Recordings/Contemporary)
Despite being one of the most technically accomplished pianists to grace the jazz world, the prodigiously talented Phineas Newborn never became a household name. Great things had been predicted for him when he burst...