Mosaic Select: Bob Brookmeyer

RELEASE
February 24, 2004
LABEL
Mosaic Select
GENRES
Jazz, Cool, West Coast Jazz, Post-Bop

Album Review

The Bob Brookmeyer volume in the Mosaic Select series is one of the more enlightening issues in that it not only includes his little-known debut quartet sides for Pacific Jazz in 1954, featuring Red Mitchell, but more importantly, brings back into print his classic Traditionalism Revisited, Street Swingers, and Kansas City Revisited albums from 1957 and 1958. These sides in particular showcased Brookmeyer's fantastic compositional and arrangement skills even better than his work with Gerry Mulligan. Some of the players on these sessions include Jimmy Giuffre, Jim Hall, Ralph Pena, Jimmy Raney, Paul Quinichette, and Dave Bailey. Brookmeyer was a complete traditionalist, but an unusual harmonist. His charts extrapolated the essence and melodic purity of the earlier jazz material and read it into the advanced harmonic theories of the day on the West Coast, as well as brought it's "cool" ambience to the proceedings -- whether the tempo was up or down. In addition to this music, there are tracks that first saw the light of day on the Playboy Jazz All Stars compilation, and Brookmeyer's self-titled album on Crown. The Street Swingers disc, in particular, with its quintet setting putting Hall, Raney, and Brookmeyer on the frontline, is a masterpiece. Also from 1958 is the Stretching Out album originally issued on United Artists with Zoot Sims and Al Cohn, as well as Hank Jones, Charlie Persip, and Freddie Green on guitar. This is a smoking, wonderfully up-tempo session full of many colors and textures, and showcases Brookmeyer's charts at his developmental peak. In all, there are the four complete albums, some alternate takes, and compilation sides, making this essential for not only Brookmeyer fans, but West Coast jazz collectors as well.
Thom Jurek, Rovi

Track Listing

  1. Liberty Belle
  2. Have You Met Miss Jones
  3. Isn't It Romantic
  4. Traditional Blues
  5. Doe Eyes
  6. Red Devil
  7. Body and Soul
  8. Last Chance
  9. Arrowhead
  10. Street Strangers
  11. Hot Buttered Noodling
  12. Musicale du Jour
  13. Raney Day
  14. Jupiter
  15. Louisiana
  16. Santa Claus Blues
  17. Truckin'
  18. Some Sweet Day
  19. Sweet Like This
  20. Jada
  21. Don't Be That Way
  22. Honeysuckle Rose
  23. Brook's Bkues
  24. Slow Freight
  25. The Sheik of Araby
  26. Jumpin' at the Woodside
  27. A Blues (What's on Your Mind)
  28. Blue and Sentimental
  29. Doggin' Around
  30. Moten Swing
  31. Trav'lin' Light
  32. Stretching Out
  33. Now Will You Be Good
  34. Pennies from Heaven
  35. King Porter Stomp
  36. Ain't Misbehavin'
  37. Bee Kay