Julian "Cannonball" Adderley - Inside Straight

Fantasy Records FT 517 (UK), released by Fantasy USA as F-9435, in 1973 This is one of the best of the late period "Cannonball" Adderley albums, and like the best of the early Riversides and later Capitols, it's a 'live' recording, done at Fantasy's Berkeley California studios, in front of an invited audience, in June 1973.  Holdovers from earlier incarnations of this wonderful group include brother Nat Adderley, cornet, Walter Booker, bass, Roy McCurdy, drums, and recent addition Hal Galper, playing electric piano, and the composer of three of the selections here, "Inner Journey", "Snakin' The Grass", and "Second Son".  Nat and Julian wrote the title track, "Inside Straight", Nat contributes "Five Of A Kind", and everyone just swings their butts off!

Freddie Hubbard - Super Blue

CBS 82866 (UK), (from Columbia JC 35386 USA), released in 1978

Freddie Hubbard is heard here, playing four of his own compositions ("To Her Ladyship", "Take It To The Ozone", "The Gospel Truth", and "Theme For Kareem" (dedicated to Kareem Al Jabbar, the world famous basketball player), as well as "Superblue", the title track composed by B. Ighner, and Gino Vanelli's "The Surest Things Can Change". Critics have tended to dismiss Hubbard's Columbia recorded output as light-weight "fusion", but this is a solid effort, and the material is first-rate. He is joined on this wonderful album by Hubert Laws, flute, Joe Henderson, tenor saxophone, Ron Carter, bass, Kenny Barron, piano, and Jack DeJohnette, drums. Producer Dale Oehler plays additional keyboards on "Super Blue", and the great George Benson guests on and plays the guitar solo on "To Her Ladyship". (I had the pleasure of hearing the Hubbard band at the 1978 Middlesborough Jazz Festival, when many of these tracks were played live, and Larry Klein, later Joni Mitchell's husband, played bass.)

Various Artists – Wild Hills o’Wannie: The Small Pipes of Northumbria

(Topic, 12TS 227, 1974)

A fascinating compilation of Northumbrian piping from Topic Records, with highly informative sleevenotes. The pipers featured include Billy Pigg, whose virtuosity and sound was a key influence on Richard Thompson’s guitar playing; Diana Blackett-Ord, one of the first female pipers to make a mark on the Northumbrian Pipers’ Society; and Joe Hutton, the shepherd whose beautiful music continued to charm audiences across the world right into the 1990s. A breakdown of the players and tunes is as follows:

Billy Pigg
Wild Hills o' Wannie
The Morpeth Rant
Skye Crofters / The Swallow's Tail
The Holey Ha'penny
The Gypsy's Lullaby / The Hawk / Memories / Coates Hall
The Lark in the Clear Air

Joe Hutton
The Midlothian Pipe Band / Charlie Hunter
Lovat Scouts / Roxborough Castle / Bonny North Tyne / Alston Flower Show
Rowley Burn Hornpipe
The Blackthorn Stick / Biddy the Bold Wife
The Humours of Bandon / Saddle the Pony

George Atkinson
The Barrington Hornpipe
The Navvy on the Line / The Friendly Visit / Remember Me / Biddy the Bold Wife / Lamb Sklnnet / De’ll Amang the Tailors
Oh Dear, What Can the Matter Be?

Diana Blackett-Ord
Blow the Wind Southerly
Londonderry Hornpipe / Boys of the Blue Hills / Corn Rigs / Harvest Home
Westering Home

Colin Caisley and Foster Charlton
Noble Squire Dacre
Salmon Tails up the Water / The Herd on the Hill / Sweet Hesleyside

Tommy Breckons
Sir Sidney Smith’s March
Fenwick o’ Bywell

Jack Armstrong – Celebrated Minstrel

(Saydisc, SDL 252, 1974)

This album, released 4 years before Jack Armstrong’s death, provides a wide-ranging retrospective of Armstrong’s career as a Northumbrian piper, composer/arranger of tunes, fiddler, and as the leader of the Barnstormers country dance group. Advisors on the compilation included such luminaries as Alan Lomax and Peter Kennedy. The recordings, from the BBC and other sources, are from a range of dates between around 1944 and 1954. They include solo pipe tunes such as Whittingham Green Lane, Noble Squire Dacre, The Wild Hills o’Wannie, and Derwentwater’s Farewell, as well as rousing country dance sets featuring tunes like the Keel Row, Durham Rangers, and Keep Your Feet Still, Geordie Hinney. A very good overview of one of the players who really brought Northumbrian pipes back to prominence and paved the way for stars such as Kathryn Tickell.

Jack Armstrong and his Northumbrian Barnstormers - North Country Dances

(HMV, 7EG 8455, 1959)

This EP, published under the auspices of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, was used to disseminate the joys of community country dancing. The four tracks are The Cumberland Square; La Russe; the Morpeth Rant; and Soldier’s Joy. Armstrong’s Northumbrian Barnstormers were by 1959 quite well-known due to their performances on the radio and TV Barn Dance programmes and this EP is a marvellous snapshot of the music used for these occasions before every other wedding booked a ceilidh band.

Jack Armstrong – Northumbrian Pipe Music

(Beltona, SEP 43, 1969)

This rare EP, autographed by Armstrong himself, is a rare appearance from an English piper on the Beltona label. This EP is filled with famous traditional tunes such as Cheviot Chase, Bobbie Shaftoe, Redesdale Hornpipe, and Border Fray (also known as Buttered Peas). Half a century before Kathryn Tickell brought the Northumbrian pipes to a wider international audience, Jack Armstrong had been approached by Burl Ives with a view to his participation in a (sadly abortive) Hollywood version of the Pied Piper of Hamelyn. Though perhaps not as wildly virtuoso as his contemporary Billy Pigg, Armstrong was very much the face of Northumbrian piping for many years.

Dick Gaughan – No More Forever

(Trailer, LER 2072, 1972)

A young Dick Gaughan in traditional mode here, recorded by the great Bill Leader. Tracks include Rattlin’ Roarin’ Willie; Jock o’Hazeldean; The Green Linnet and The Fair Flower of Northumberland. Gaughan’s fiery guitar is coupled with Aly Bain’s fiddle and, of course, the voice is unmistakeable. Whatever Dick Gaughan performs, he makes his own and this largely traditional set of songs is no exception.

The Easy Club – Skirlie Beat

REL Records, (RELS 483, 1987)

This album (and the percussion-heavy title track) is named after a peculiarly Scottish concoction, skirlie. Like the dish, the Easy Club’s music is a mix of very Scottish ingredients with other flavours. There’s a rock tinge to the mining disaster song, “Augengeich”, while the band’s version of Ewan MacColl’s classic “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” features some very lovely chromatic harmonica. There’s even the surprise inclusion of an old Kenneth McKellar hit, “The Song of the Clyde” – of course adapted to suit the Easy Club’s unique style. The vocals and instrumental playing are impeccable as ever, and the eclectic arrangements are still a joy even in these days when the likes of Bellowhead have rendered genre-mixing folk quite normal.

Dick Gaughan – A Different Kind of Love Song

(Celtic Music, CM 017, 1983)

With this album, the inimitable Dick Gaughan produced an instant classic. The power of Gaughan’s highly charged, political and very Scottish delivery is matched by his rapid-fire guitar playing. Something about this man’s voice ideally suits the richness of playback on vinyl. This set of songs clearly resonates with the early 1980s opposition to a Thatcherite Britain, and yet the lyrics have a relevance that is timeless. Gaughan’s own “Think Again” has become a folk scene standard. His version of Peggy Seeger’s “Song of Choice” is chilling and thought-provoking. Leon Rosselson’s “Stand Up For Judas” is provocative but powerful. And the album rounds off with a wholly unexpected but brilliant cover version of Joe South’s “Games People Play” (you categorize Gaughan at your peril).

The Easy Club – Chance or Design

(REL Records, RELS 479, 1985)

An absolutely gorgeous album which blends Scottish folk music with a Django-esque jazziness. The virtuosity of the playing and singing is easily understood when the line-up is made up of Jack Evans, John Martin, Rod Paterson and Jim Sutherland, but the sum is, if anything, greater than its parts. There’s a real musical alchemy in this album, all the way from the opening gentle swing of “Black is the Colour” (a version I prefer to Cara Dillon’s rather more famous recording) to the album’s final track, Jim Sutherland’s technically stunning bodhran solo.

Simon Thoumire and Ian Carr, Hootz

Black Crow (CRO 225, 1990)

This is the 1990 debut album by Thoumire and Carr, now mainstays of the UK folk scene and a duo who paved the way for a vibrant new generation of traditional musicians. Simon Thoumire (a Scotsman who brilliantly plays English concertina!) won the BBC Radio 2 Young Tradition Folk Award in 1989. He brings a jazziness and humour to his performance that sits incredibly well alongside a deep understanding of the traditions from which the music hails. Ian Carr is rightly one of the country’s most in-demand virtuoso guitarists, with a wonderful feel for syncopation and harmony. He has toured with the likes of Eddi Reader and John McCusker, was a lynchpin of the Old Rope String Band, and was a key component of Kate Rusby’s group as she stretched beyond the folk clubs and into mainstream TV and broadsheet recognition. This album is, as you’d expect from two young talents on their first vinyl outing, full of energy, vibrancy, and experimentation. More traditional fare such as “The Mason’s Apron”, “Old Hag You Have Killed Me” and “Master Crowley’s” sit alongside unexpected gems such as “St Louis Blues” and even that well-known English concertina piece (NOT!) “Lullaby of Birdland”.

A rare opportunity to hear two young musicians at the top of their game, but with their careers ahead of them.

The Oscar Peterson Trio at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival

Verve Records V-8024 (USA) released in 1961; original issue: 1957

The Oscar Peterson Trio, heard here in a live concert in 1957 from the Stratford Shakespearean Festival in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, had existed since the early 1950's. with guitarist Herb Ellis stepping in to replace original guitarist Barney Kessel in 1953. The great Ray Brown, bassist extraordinaire, has been present almost from the beginning. The empathy between these three musicians verges on the telepathic, and Oscar has recounted that Ray and Herb would often get together after hours just to play time together, without the pianist!
In any case, this is one of those special albums where everything's perfect, the venue, the audience, and of course the Trio. Selections include "Falling In Love With Love", "How About You", "Flamingo", "Swinging On A Star", "Gypsy In My Soul", "How High The Moon" (with a superlative bass solo from Ray Brown; a written transcript of his solo is included), Ellington's "Love You Madly", and the bebop anthem "52nd Street Theme", taken at a breakneck pace.

Gerry Mulligan and the Concert Jazz Band on Tour / Guest Soloist: Zoot Sims

Verve V-8438 (mono) (USA), released 1962

Just a year and a few months after the formation of his Concert Jazz Band, baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan took the guys on a European tour, recording them 'live' in several major cities, including Milan, Italy, Berlin, Germany, and then back home in Santa Monica, California. Along with his own formidable arranging skills, Gerry utilised the arranging talents of Bill Holman and Johnny Mandel, and the soloists were mainly Gerry himself, Bob Brookmeyer on valve trombone, the great Zoot Sims on tenor saxophone, along with underrated trumpeter Don Ferrara on "Barbara's Theme". Mandel wrote that one, along with Theme from "I Want To Live", a film starring Susan Hayward. Sims contributed "The Red Door", there are two treatments of Ben Webster's "Go Home", and a Mulligan original called "Apple Core". The band numbers fourteen musicians, and it sounds like more, such is the quality of the writing.

Stan Getz and Charlie Parker, The Saxes of Stan Getz and Charlie Parker

Jazztone Record Society J 1240 (mono) (USA), released 1956

The pairing on LP of two of the pre-eminent saxophonists of the bebop era, Stan Getz and Charlie Parker, presents the chance for comparison, although the Parker tracks pre-date those by Getz by around four years. The 1947 Parker sides are from his Dial Records years, and feature the young Miles Davis on trumpet, along with his classic quintet members Duke Jordan, piano, Tommy Potter, bass, and Max Roach, drums. Trombonist J. J. Johnson guests on two tracks (Parker's "Charlie's Wig" and "Drifting On A Reed"). Bird wrote another three of the six selections, "Dexterity", "Bird Of Paradise" and "Dewey Square", and the Fields-McHugh standard "Don't Blame Me" rounds out the selection. The Getz sides are unusual in that they showcase his new discovery on piano, Connecticut native Horace Silver, and feature his writing on three tracks("Potter's Luck", "Split Kick", and "Penny"), as well as three others written by another Connecticut musician, Gigi Gryce, who would later play with the trumpeter Clifford Brown and in the Jazz Lab band with trumpeter Donald Byrd. ("Yvette", "Melody Express" and "Wildwood"). Also featured in the Getz lineup was guitarist Jimmy Raney, and the unison lines of guitar and tenor sax work surprisingly well

Laurindo Almeida, The Spanish Guitars of Laurindo Almeida

Capitol Records SP 8521 (USA), released 1961.

Laurindo Almeida offers us a brilliant programme of music adapted from the concert keyboard repertoire for the guitar, and does this in what is probably one of the most successful of the albums utilizing over-dubbing techniques. Almeida performs all the parts in transcriptions for two and three guitars. In the jazz realm, perhaps Bill Evans' "Conversations With Myself" (1963) and "Further Conversations With Myself" (1967), come closest to replicating the success of this early experiment.
Selections include:
Falla: Farruca (The Miller's Dance from The Three-Cornered Hat)
Debussy: Clair de Lune and La Plus Que Lente Almeida: Brazilliance No. 1
Bach: Our Father, Who Art In Heaven (Chorale-prelude from Clavierubung, Part III) and Duetto III (From Clavierubung, Part III)
Ravel: Menuet (From Le Tombeau de Couperin) Chopin: Valse (Op. 69, No. 1) and Mazurka (Op. 7, No. 1)
Granados: Zambra (Spanish Dance No. 11) Rachmaninoff: Prelude in C Sharp Minor (Op. 3, No. 2).

Frank Sinatra - Sinatra Sings Greats Songs from Great Britain

Reprise R 1006 [mono] (UK release only), released in 1962.

In 1962, Frank Sinatra was appearing in the UK doing a series of concerts for Children's Charities, and this album was the climax of the tour, recorded in Bayswater, London, with the crème de la creme of London's top studio players under the baton of the great Robert Farnon. Only one of the selections, "London By Night", had been recorded before by Frank, on the 1958 Capitol album "Come Fly With Me", but here, in a programme of outstanding British popular songs, he and the orchestra recorded a tour de force performance for posterity. It seems strange that Reprise Records neglected to release this album in the United States, which partially explains its rarity value, but the selections - "The Very Thought Of You", "We'll Gather Lilacs", "If I Had You", "Now Is The Hour", "The Gypsy", "A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square", "A Garden In The Rain", the aforementioned "London By Night", "We'll Meet Again", and the little-heard but beautiful "I'll Follow My Secret Heart", are all ballads, and Sinatra's "swinger" image of the early '60's would seem to be at odds with this type of repertoire. Be that as it may, he also had a great reputation as an interpreter of ballads, so this album is a worthy addition to his legacy.

Dave Pike - It's Time for Dave Pike

Riverside RLP 360 (mono)(USA), released in 1961.

Having been brought to Riverside's attention a few months after his arrival in New York by Detroit pianist Barry Harris (who also plays in the quartet on this album, then 23-year-old vibist Dave Pike (also from Detroit) shows here why he was so admired by his peers. With a rhythm section comprising Harris, bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Billy Higgins, he essays three bop standards by Miles Davis ("Solar"), Tadd Dameron ("Hot House") and Charlie Parker ("Cheryl"). Also getting the Pike treatment are two of his own originals ("It's Time" and "Forward"), as well as a tune associated with Davis, "On Green Dolphin Street", an unaccompanied vibes solo rendition of "Little Girl Blue", and a blues line contributed by his friend, trumpeter Don Cherry, "Tendin' To Business". So, a well-rounded programme which epitomizes the Riverside '60's sound. The low asking price is due to the fact that there is graffitti (my name) on the back cover.

Lee Ritenour - RIT/2

WEA / Elektra Records 96. 0186-1 (West Germany) released in 1982.

The California guitarist's second solo album, featuring future collaborators in the fusion group Fourplay, Nathan East, bass, and Harvey Mason, drums and percussion, who is also listed with Ritenour as co-producer/arranger. The lead vocals on six tracks, as well as co-composer with Ritenour, is singer / keyboardist Eric Tagg, who has a distinctive vocal sound. Other musicians featured include bassists Abraham Laboriel and Neil Stubenhaus, drummers John Robinson, Carlos Vega, Jeff Porcaro and Weather Report percussionist Alex Acuna, along with Paulhino da Costa. Don Grusin and Mike Boddiker play various synthesizers, and there's even a track featuring Tom Scott on tenor saxophone. Brass and string arrangements on four of the tracks are by ex- Seawind and Al Jarreau trumpeter Jerry Hey, with three trumpets, two trombones and two flutes. The tunes are all originals, mostly by Ritenour and Tagg, A worthy time capsule of that California '80's fusion sound.

Art Tatum - The Art of Tatum

Jazz Life 2673751 (West Germany), no release date given; 1938-'39 recordings.

Sixteen solo piano renditions by Art Tatum, considered the finest pianist in jazz right up until his death in the early 1950's. Fats Waller's famous disclaimer "I just play piano, but God is in the house tonight", when Tatum appeared one night at his club gig says it all, really. It's said that the great Oscar Peterson dedicated his life and career to playing as much like Tatum as he could manage, and never really felt he'd accomplished that, as great as he was. The present album, with tracks recorded in Hollywood in 1938-'39, contains "Fine And Dandy", "I've Got The World On A String", "I've Got A Right To Sing The Blues", "I'm Coming Virginia" (popularized by Bix Beiderbecke), "Day In, Day Out", "Make Believe", "Indiana", "Sweet Lorraine", "I'll Get By", "I'll Never Be The Same", "Judy", "Body And Soul", "All God's Chillun Got Rhythm", and others.

Art Tatum - Legacy

Ember Records CJS 848 (UK) released in 1975; 1939 recordings. (NOTE: Record jacket states that it's in "stereo enhanced mono")

Eleven classic Tatum solo performances, recorded in Hollywood in 1939, when he was aged 29, unfettered by any accompanying players, who would have been surplus to requirements here. Such completeness of technique and flow of ideas in a seemingly unschooled player, playjng the popular tunes of the time, several of which became perennial jazz vehicles for improvisation. Tunes such as "Tea For Two", "I Can't Give You Anything But Love", "On The Sunny Side Of The Street", "Limehouse Blues, "Indiana, "Day In, Day Out", "Fine And Dandy", "I've Got A Right To Sing The Blues" and three others, played by The Righteous Art!