A previously-unreleased live recording of Stan Getz's quartet in 1961 gives us a chance to hear the saxophonist just before he took a turn into bossa-nova jazz.
It's a new year, a new decade (at least by my conventional definition), and a new Night Lights retrospective on historical releases and reissues from the past 12 months. Some of these recordings are featured in this week's program; as always, there's not enough time to include them all. (Also see some suggested additions that have come from online listeners or readers at the bottom of the post.) These were some of the sides that afforded me the most listening pleasure in 2019. (And often reading pleasure as well; as physical media continues to give way to streaming, I continue to cherish the detailed and informative booklets that often accompany CDs and LPs like those listed below). Happy 2020, with gratitude to the researchers, producers, annotators, and most importantly, the artists themselves who created these works in the first place:
Ran Blake/Jeanne Lee, The Newest Sound You Never Heard: European Recordings 1966-67
Betty Carter, The Music Never Stops
Nat King Cole, Hittin' The Ramp: The Early Years, 1936-43
John Coltrane, Blue World
John Coltrane, Coltrane '58: Prestige Recordings
Miles Davis, Rubberband
Eric Dolphy, Musical Prophet: The Expanded 1963 New York Studio Sessions
Bill Evans, Evans In England
Erroll Garner, One World Concert
Stan Getz, Getz At The Gate
Johnny Griffin and Eddie Lockjaw Davis, Ow! Live At The Penthouse
Lloyd McNeill, Treasures
Wes Montgomery, Back On Indiana Avenue: The Carroll DeCamp Recordings
Art Pepper, Promise Kept: The Complete Artist House Recordings
Horace Tapscott, Live at I.U.C.C.
Horace Tapscott, Why Don't You Listen?
Charles Tolliver, Charles Tolliver All-Stars
Various artists, Spiritual Jazz Volume 9: Blue Notes
Various artists, Spiritual Jazz Volume 10: Prestige
Additional suggestions from online readers and listeners:
Lookout Farm, At Onkel Po's Carnegie Hall Hamburg 1975
Woody Shaw, Basel 1980
Timeless All-Stars, Live At Onkel Po's Carnegie Hall Hamburg 1982
The new Mosaic sets of Hank Mobley's 1963-70 Blue Note recordings and Woody Herman's 1943-54 recordings for several different labels arrived too late for consideration in this program. They will each be the subject of an upcoming Night Lights program.
