Search - Joe Gordon :: Early Sessions

EXC Reissue of Three LPs, Worth Three Times This Price

Mike DiMartino | Rochester, NY | 10/10/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"So far I have just a few of Spain's Fresh Sound CDs, but every one's a winner with original cover art and audio. (By the way, there's a new kid on the Spanish scene, Gambit Records, and their 2-LP CD reissue of Art Farmer's ART and PERCEPTION albums is as meticulously original as any Japanese CD; budget priced, too.) Back in the '70s I bought the Trip LP reissue of INTRODUCING JOE GORDON (which also included the second album heard on this CD, THE JAZZ SCHOOL). As some of you might recall, though we were excited to have those Trips, Trip's mastering was fair at best. But with Trip you'd get a good idea of how the original sounded, mainly because Trip never added simulated stereo. Based on a listening comparison to the Trip LP, I report to you there's no fake stereo or reverb added to these 1954 sessions.



I'm a stickler for original cover art. I really don't mind that Fresh Sound didn't exactly use the original EmArcy cover, a crop of Joe in the studio. However--and perhaps for the better--Fresh Sound used the full, uncropped session photo from which the crop was taken (wish they wouldn't have tinted it, though). And there are additional black & white session photos in the booklet, but no reproduction of the THE JAZZ SCHOOL cover. The third session, BLAKEY, is a tremendous bonus, eventhough the booklet has no reproduction of that album's cover art. I wanted so much to give this CD five stars, but the absence of these two covers makes this issue incomplete.



BLAKEY is a session I had never heard, and it features Joe with Gigi Gryce playing some fresh sounding tunes, along with a few tunes Gigi recorded with Joe's contemporary, Clifford Brown, just a year or so prior. And if that isn't enough, they also do Horace Silver's "Mayreh," one of the tunes Clifford fans will recognize from Art Blakey's A NIGHT AT BIRDLAND, which was recorded just three months earlier.



In 1963, Joe passed on, a victim of smoking in bed, just after recording some great LPs, like LOOKIN' GOOD, for Contemporary. By that time, his playing was reflecting his interest in players like Miles. He was a work in progress. He's also on Harold Land's West Coast Blues OJC CD, as well as many of Shelly Manne's live dates, also on OJC. And check him out on the Charlie Mariano OJC CDs, too (there were some monster cats in Boston, I'll tell ya). All those dates are great, indeed. But there's something about the feel of these EmArcy dates that make them my favorite Joe.



I'm Mike DiMartino in Rochester, NY, USA"