Album Reviews

The great drummer Art Blakey, still playing ferociously at age 62 when this Keystone Korner live set was recorded January, 1982, was a great believer in giving young talent gigging opportunities. He also was an excellent judge of the up-and-coming, and over the years he helped develop many major jazz artists, including Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard and Hank Mobley, as well as Wynton and Branford Marsalis, both of whom are spotlighted on this record. In fact, it was Branford’s recording debut.

The sextet (Donald Brown, piano, Charles Fambrough, drums, Bill Pierce, tenor sax, plus Blakey and the Marsalis brothers) tears through 5 extended tunes, including jazz standards like Monk’s “In Walked Bud,” and Ellington’s “In a Sentimental Mood,” as well as Curtis Fuller’s (another Jazz Messengers alumni) “A La Mode,” Bobby Watson’s “Fuller Love,” plus “Waterfalls,” a Wynton Marsalis original.

Each soloist gets plenty of time to stretch out. Wynton demonstrates his considerable and impressive chops but he also sounds facile at times, a negative that’s dogged his entire career. At one point during the opener, “In Walked Bud,” one of his solos quotes the unlikely “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen," at another point he gets the trumpet to purr like a pussy cat and during a few ascending scales he tacks on a “triumphant” air that just seems out of place in jazz. It’s kind of like what he does on the Bach trumpet piece he performed for the opening of CBS’s “Sunday Morning” show that replaced the original one by Doc Severinsen. I liked the original better.

Enough picking on Wynton, but let me put in a good word for Branford, heavily influenced by Coltrane here, playing explosively and brimming with great ideas, which are much appreciated by the audience. Wynton’s first solo on “Fuller Love,” is an articulat thing of beauty and blinding speed. The young pianist Donald Brown, 28 when this was recorded, plays with a wickedly fast right hand while feverishly McCoy Tyner-like.

The high energy arrangements are tightly sprung and the playing is fierce on this extremely well recorded set, propelled by Blakey’s drum kit, which because of his lead status, gets splayed out across the soundstage, dampening somewhat the “live” sensation. That’s more than made up for my being able to cleanly hear and feel every cymbal hit.

I have had the original Concord LP since it was first issued, and always thought of it as an “okay” recording at best: somewhat metallic in the upper mids and lacking ultimate transparency, plus there was an excess of post-production studio reverb added that also marred the sensation of “live.”

I have to say I was totally shocked by how much better this Pure Audiophile Records double LP set,1/2 speed mastered by Stan “the man” Ricker sounds compared to the original.

There’s far greater transparency and shimmer to the cymbals, more weight to the rest of Blakey’s kit (especially the kick drum), greater timbral accuracy to all of the instruments, particularly Brown’s piano, and overall, more of a “live” sensation, including how the audience sounds.

A bonus track, “Controversy” from the album New York Scene and a gatefold jacket with two Blakey paintings by jazz artist Bruni Sablan (http://www.brunijazzart.com/Blakey,%20Art,%20LP%20News.htm) add luster to the project.

If you own and love the original, this reissue will greatly enhance your pleasure. If you have a well-stocked jazz collection, you’ll enjoy this and while any jazz lover will dig it, if your jazz collection is weak, I can think of 100 classic jazz albums—original or reissue— I’d buy first, but don’t let me stop you from this musically and sonically outstanding reissue.