Search - Clifford Jordan :: Spellbound

Master Musician, Early Work

banos | Los Banos | 10/07/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Clifford Jordan was a master musician who is regrettably underrated. So versatile - he complemented Dolphy in Mingus' band, no mean feat, which you can hear on some classic recordings. He also played with Horace Silver, Slide Hampton, and on some excellent Japanese releases with Richard Davis on bass. But the work that best shows his warm, innovative but down-to-earth character is the work where he is leader. I feel the classic is the Glass Bead Game Sessions, coming back into print soon I see, and the Mapleshade label releases are all worthwhile. This early recording, where he's already fully mature, playing his own compositions, is an essential part of the story. Good jazz, not background music, but comfortable, full, rich and mellow, no matter where he ventures, here, he's always still at home. You can't ever go wrong where Clifford is leader."

An underrated master

N. Dorward | Toronto, ON Canada | 06/17/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"A little-known classic. Jordan is still best known for his stint in Mingus's band; his other key association was with the pianist Cedar Walton, who plays on this recording. (Other interesting associations later in his career were with the Third Stream pianist Ran Blake and with the singer Carmen McRae.) This disc is a late-bebop classic, with Jordan applying a tenor style suggestive of Dexter Gordon's to a set of intriguing originals (including "Toy", a tune later recorded by Cannonball Adderley and Anthony Braxton[!]) and some standards--the highlight probably being the incendiary blues "Au Privave". Jordan, like his fellow Mingus alumnus Booker Ervin, deserves to be much more celebrated in the annals of the music; this disc gives a compelling instance of his art."