Something In B-Flat – Ray Bryant

Our audio excerpt starts right at the top of the track, and immediately you hear and feel Ray Bryant's incomparable brand of fun and swing. The soloing is "rhythm changes" with a defined bridge, and there are also a couple of challenging two-horn passages that set up and mix in with the bass solo.

When this composition was recorded, pianist/composer Ray Bryant and saxophonist Benny Golson hadn't recorded together yet. That would first take place exactly two months later, on December 17, 1957, when they recorded with Dizzy Gillespie on his album "The Greatest Trumpet Of Them All" (Verve). In 1958 they recorded together for United Artists on the album "Benny Golson and the Philadelphians," and in 1959 Ray was the pianist for two more Golson recordings for the New Jazz label: "Gone With Golson" and "Groovin' With Golson." In 1957, the year of this recording, Ray was already well established as a pianist as well as composer: one of his classics, Cubano Chant, had first been recorded in 1955.

Don Sickler: "Ray has written a lot of music over the years, enough so it's hard to keep track of it all. A few years ago I had the pleasure of reminding him of this one, Something In B-Flat. Maybe because he didn't record it himself, he'd almost forgotten about it. But when I told him that this track was used in the Tom Hanks movie ‘The Terminal,’ it immediately got his attention."