Search - Charlie Shavers & Ray Bryant Quartet :: Vol. 3-Complete Recordings

Plenty of horn

Nikica Gilic | Zagreb, Croatia | 01/30/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If you like mainstream jazz, or jazz trumpet, Charlie Shavers is your kinda guy and this CD contains some hot mainstream tracks as well as some subdued ones.



His tone is bright, rich and resonating, but also flexible; if you've never heard Charlie play, you could say he was a combination of Roy Eldridge and Buck Clayton if you will, with a touch of Satchmo. But he was first and foremost a very distinctive player, capable of fiery explosions and of subtle balladeering, as you can clearly hear from this beautiful compilation.



Now, for the informative section: the CD contains albums "Like Charlie" and "Excitement Unlimited", plus 5 track from "Charlie Shavers at Le Crazy Horse saloon in Paris", with unknown accompaniment (tracks 13-17). Charlie also takes a quite likable vocal on "It don't mean a thing there"

Tracks 1-12 boast Ray Bryant on piano, Tommy Bryant on bass, Oliver Jackson on drums;

tracks 18-29 present Charlie's Orchestra - Billy Byers (tb), Jerome Richardson (as), Budd Johnson (ts), Bruce Martin (p), George Barnes (g), T. Bryant (b), O. Jackson (dm). There is also a touch of flute there, probably by Richardson, quite an accomplished flute player.



There are quite a lot of standards here (including "Night in Tunisia), but also some fine Shavers' originals (including "Minor Blues", "Period of Adjustment", "Don't be late" and, yes, "Undecided") the line-up varies between two halves of the CD, so there's quite enough variety here,

although I would lie if I said I liked all the tracks equally: some are too concise (quite a few tracks last around 2 minutes, some are even shorter).



And, the song listed as "Porgy" (McHugh-Fields) is actually

"I Loves You Porgy" form Gershwin-Heyward's "Porgy and Bess""