Contemporary Records -- Original Jazz Classics Sampler

Contemporary Records

Original Jazz Classics Sampler

OJCCD-3701-2

Various groups

Get this one for your car (it will dig it), for this must be one of the best samplers around. The musicians participating are a veritable whose-who, playing in what I guess were "the middle years" of Jazz, in the fifties and early sixties - and right smashing those years were, too. Manne, Rollins, Hawes, Carter, Pepper, Humes, Coleman, Kessel, Rumsey, Previn, Counce, Newborn, Jr., Land, Edwards, Golson - and those are only the leaders. The sidemen are mostly stars and leaders in their own right.

This will all be familiar to older fans, the original records were all big sellers (if you can say that about Jazz) and famous in their day - and we should thank OJC for doing the right thing by them. What is documented here is the astonishing amount of bop of such amazing quality that issued, seemingly without end, from the presses. My personal favorite, because I always dug Benny Golson, is the final track with Farmer, Watkins, Cleveland, Shihab, Gryce, Kelly, Chambers and Persip. And I just have to go out and get one that has slipped through my clutches all these years, the Teddy Edwards album, "Together Again." Highly recommended.

by Lawrence Brazier

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