Michael Fremer

Few things are more annoying to record lovers living in a home (particularly an older one) with a floor that flexes and causes records to skip as you attempt to carefully move around the room. The first thought is to buy a sturdier, more massive equipment stand but that doesn't work!

Last year while in Los Angeles I was invited to a cramped Culver City editing studio where I got to see extraordinary footage of a then unfinished sprawling documentary series called "American Epic" subtitled "The First Time America Heard Itself" presented by T Bone Burnett, Robert Redford and Jack White.

While hard-bop tenor saxophonist Booker Ervin’s best known work was with Charles Mingus and his later Prestige albums are regarded as the hub of his solo recordings, this 1961 Candid set offers plenty of muscular grit, superb Nola Penthouse sound and the stellar backing trio of George Tucker on bass, Al Harewood on drums and one “Felix Krull” on piano, most likely a Nat Hentoff-assigned name given to Horace Parlan who was contracted to Blue Note at the time. In fact, Tucker and Harewood were part of Parlan’s quartet, as was Ervin for a spell.

You've had the files to listen to, compare and vote on for some time now so here are the capsule reviews.