Oh, man, it’s great seeing this. This is from the second Mt. Fuji Blue Note Jazz Festival. Every time we had Art Blakey at the festival, I’d assemble a big band around him to close the three-day festival. Looking at Art, swinging like hell, connecting with the musicians and with the audience — what an amazing man. Woody Shaw is in magnificent form here. That’s Bobby Watson taking the alto breaks, and, of course, Herbie Hancock on piano, He and Woody are locked in on this. Cool to see young musicians in and among veterans like Grachan Moncur and James Spaulding.

-Michael Cuscuna

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Liner notes for the track Double Whammy:

The album Hank Mobley with Donald Byrd and Lee Morgan, which like several Blue Notes has a different title, Hank Mobley Sextet in this case, on the back liner, creates an interesting band of musicians who had varying experience with the leader. Silver and Byrd, of course, were Mobley’s steady partners. Drummer Charlie Persip had been a friend of the saxophonist’s years before they played together in Dizzy Gillespie’s 1954 group. Mobley had already encountered Paul Chambers on sessions with J.J. Johnson, Elmo Hope and Coltrane/Cohn/Sims, and partnered with Lee Morgan earlier in the month on Savoy. The two trumpets/tenor front line, employed by Byrd on his Transition date a year earlier with Joe Gordon in the second trumpet chair, was Mobley’s idea according to Leonard Feather’s original liner notes. “It gave us a limited range, and it was a challenge to make the writing interesting,” Mobley explained. “We used a certain amount of closed voicing, some unison lines, some double thirds; I think the ensemble got a good blend.” Feather’s notes were also the occasion for Mobley’s famous comment that he was seeking “Not a big sound, not a small sound, just a round sound.”

…Another fanfare frames Double Whammy, a 32-bar tune with interesting chord changes and an unusual three-bar slot left open in the theme chorus for Silver’s improvi\u00acsation. Mobley also uses an ensemble variation on the theme as a launching figure in the third of his four tenor choruses and during Persip’s drum chorus. After a spirited tenor solo (with some of Mobley’s trademark licks employed cleverly on the final bridge) Morgan takes two choruses with Byrd following hard on his heels. Both trumpeters are in a feisty mood that carries over to their two choruses of eight-bar exchanges, which Byrd commences. Morgan’s half-valve phrases already distinguish the teenager’s work, although both trumpeters are in fine form here. – Bob Blumenthal, liner notes

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http://www.mosaicrecords.com presents the great tenor man Stanley Turrentine. The six Blue Note dates collected on this Mosaic set are in a class by themselves; they are pure hard bop in the selection and treatment of the material and in instrumentation with Stanley Turrentine sharing the front line with a trumpet player or trombonist equal to him in talent. Mosaic Records is delighted to offer these excellent but overlooked hard bop sessions.

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Wow, this is a riveting transcription of Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” that unfolds as the music is being played. It reminds me how miserably I failed at being able to sight read and how thoroughly amazed I am at what Coltrane played and at how someone could commit it to musical notation in less than ten years of time! Have fun, watch this and be amazed.

-Michael Cuscuna

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