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A simple, funky blues head full of stop-time. This song follows a similar format to many such hard-bop stop-time heads such as Moanin': a long pickup followed by two hits, whose harmonies have a 4-3 suspension. These suspensions are carried over to the "turnaround," which is a classic V-IV turnaround.
In this arrangement, the bass doubles the piano melody. The guitar plays the hits with the drums. On the 9th and 10th measures, the guitar plays half-note chords; the drums are not playing here. Kenny is the only soloist on the recording.
The rhythm section of Kenny Drew, Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen and Barry Altschul recorded on three albums on four consecutive days in Milan, Italy, of which this is the first. On February 22nd and 24th, they were joined by tenor saxophonist Claudio Fasoli for his album "Lido," while in between these sessions on the 23rd they played on vocalist Tiziana Ghiglioni's "Sounds Of Love." Philip Catherine recorded with Drew and Pedersen on two Drew-led trio albums in 1975 ("Morning") and 1977 ("In Concert").
Kenny Drew was born in New York City. He studied classical piano but soon turned to jazz. His recording career started in 1950 at age 22, first with Howard McGhee for Blue Note, then Sonny Stitt for Prestige. These two 1950 recordings plus a surviving radio broadcast with Charlie Parker (December 8, 1950) put him in the company of jazz greats J.J Johnson, Max Roach and Art Blakey. Read more...
