Album Reviews

This previously unreleased March 9th 1959 session recorded at Rudy Van Gelder’s Hackensack home studio is a “must have” for Blue Note “completists”, especially for those with an affinity for car and plane crash videos. If you are just getting into the rich Blue Note catalog, your money is best spent elsewhere as this session, despite the stellar group, often sounds listless and forced. Grooves get glossed over in favor of speed.

Okay, that’s harsh, but there’s a reason why Alfred Lion chose to not release this session 60 years ago and it’s not because it got lost under a bed and was discovered by one of the musician’s children.

This short-lived edition of The Jazz Messengers featuring Lee Morgan, a returning Hank Mobley, Bobby Timmons, Jymie Merritt and Blakey, recorded a month after this session longer and far superior live club versions of four of the six tunes here, which Blue Note did release on 2 LPs as Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers at the Jazz Corner of the World.

On the Mobley-penned opener “Hipsippy Blues”, which has a familiar and comforting Blue Note “vibe” that annotator Bob Blumenthal describes as having a Blakey “meat-and-potatoes shuffle groove”, even the usually high energy drummer sounds listless. Morgan’s first solo falls flat. Early on, Blakey gives him what sounds to me like a 'rat-tat-tat' wake-up call but to no avail.

Morgan pushes harder and gets more going on “Close Your Eyes” but that tune too sounds like its huffing and puffing for air despite a nice Timmons solo and one from Merritt at the song’s conclusion.

Ensemble entries and exits are tentative giving much of the goings on a ragged not pleasingly “loose” feel. That said, these are, as Blumenthal says, musicians “in their prime” so when Timmons cuts loose on the breakneck blues “Jimerick” there’s plenty to enjoy, especially since the tune was not reprised on the live album.

Same with Timmons’ “Quick Trick", which opens side two, but while these musicians are “in their prime”, you don’t have to be a musicologist to feel (if not being able to analyze why) a considerable downdraft to the entire session despite some bright spots.

As Blumenthal (who, for his notes should get a special commendation from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy) writes, “If the Birdland recordings overshadowed this studio session….”. They did and do, though the closer, “Just Coolin’”, is without comparison to the somewhat shorter live version, a fine overall effort.

Hearing greats struggling and/or playing with less than full bodied commitment and inspiration can be painful, but it also is a great reminder that what sounds so easy and free on the great Blue Note records (especially here for me, Lee Morgan’s repeated solo deflations) is anything but!

The sound is late Hackensack RVG, which means good instrumental hard left/right separation, pleasant, close miked timbres and a somewhat muffled center stage piano. Four months later Van Gelder would move into his Englewood Cliffs studio and continue recording many of the greatest recordings in jazz history though not every musician liked what Rudy did and he wasn’t a fan of the LPs he cut from these tapes! Nice RTI pressing here with Kevin Gray delivering what's on the tape, not what might be needed to make it playable on poorly performing turntables!