Album Reviews

If you buy only one LP this year on faith because of what you read on this website, please make it this one that comes from so far out in left field, it’s in the bleachers.

Connoisseurs of the French Black and Blue label ( I became one as the result of a garage sale where I found a stack for a buck a piece and bought them out of pure curiosity) know that the label produced a series of sonic stunners, recording mostly fading or underappreciated American jazz and blues artists and while many were compilations from older catalog material, some were, like this one, original productions featuring sound that rivals anything done anywhere.

This set, recorded at Seed Studio in Vallauris, France, in July of 1974 features jazz saxophonist Albert J. (Budd) Johnson on soprano and tenor. Johnson, wo was 64 at the time and passed away ten years later is backed by the great Earl Hines on piano (with whom he’d played some forty years earlier), Jimmy Leary on bass and David “Panama” Francis on drums. Francis was a well-respected jazz drummer who played with the likes of Roy Eldridge, Duke Ellington and Illinois Jacquet, but who had no problem moving to rock when that tidal wave hit.

Francis drummed on Elvis Presley demos, on The Four Seasons’ classics “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” and “Walk Like a Man,” on Neil Sedaka’s “Calendar Girl,” and Bobby Darin’s “Splish Splash,” and even on Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue,” believe it or not, among many other famous rock classics.

This reissue adds the track “Mr. Bechet,” which was not on the 1974 Black and Blue original. It’s a set of “traditional swing jazz” that in 2008 can sound dated and anything but adventurous, but if you let go of the form and concentrate on the strong playing all around, that and the stupendous sound will drive this one home first play and every play.

Johnson plays in a sinewy, bawdy style that conjures up images of whorehouses, Burlesque and fishnet stockings. There’s nothing cerebral, subtle or mathematical about anyone’s playing here, as everyone digs in and moves a lot of air, whether its Johnson’s leering sax, Francis’s rim shots and bass drum pops, Leary’s galloping low lines or Hines’s stutter- stepping keyboards. Everyone’s playing for sex and everyone scores.

The sonics are, well, off the charts big, deep, full and dynamic. The kick drum’s bottom end wallop is especially notable as is what sounds like the directly miked stand up bass. Johnson’s sax is cushioned in a huge cloud of atmosphere and the harmonic envelope encasing all of the instruments is Vivid with a capital “V.” Of course the close-miked studio perspective isn’t what you’d call “realistic,” but who cares?

This big, exciting, warm recording is all about musical communication as much as it’s about musical realism, and from that perspective it’s 100% effective.

Joyous, physical and swinging, this set of spontaneous music-making is a pleasure to listen to first time and every time after that. As I said at the beginning here, if you buy only one record on trust based on what you read on this website, if you make this the one, I guarantee you, you will not be disappointed.