Art Pepper: Meets The Rhythm Section (Contemporary Records Acoustic Sounds series) [CRAFT]

Why you'll love it

This Contemporary Records Acoustic Sounds series edition has all-analogue mastering from the original tapes by Bernie Grundman, pressed on 180g vinyl at QRP. The Penguin Jazz Guide calls it a masterpiece.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Contemporary Records Acoustic Sounds series
• All-analogue mastering by Bernie Grundman
• Pressed at Quality Record Pressings
• Rice paper inner sleeve
• Stereo mix
• Pressed in the USA

About the album

Most of us like a fortnight's notice before a dentist appointment. Art Pepper found out about this session the morning he was due in the studio, with three musicians he'd never met and greatly admired: Red Garland, Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones, who were Miles Davis's rhythm section at the time and happened to be in Los Angeles.

They cut it in a single day, January 19, 1957, at Contemporary's studio, with Roy DuNann engineering and Lester Koenig producing. Pepper's alto opens with Cole Porter's "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To," and the quartet tosses off "Red Pepper Blues" and "Waltz Me Blues" as instant collaborations. "Imagination" and "Star Eyes" are tender, "Straight Life" (later the title of his autobiography) is a blur, and "Tin Tin Deo" and Dizzy Gillespie's "Birks' Works" show East meeting West with no lukewarm moments at all.

The New York Times called it an honest record, with Pepper pulling the music out of himself in exalted company. Sixty-odd years on, it's still the one we'd play anyone who thinks West Coast jazz can't burn.

Also at Kops: more Art Pepper on vinyl · browse Classic Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Contemporary / Craft (cat# CR00382), a reissue of the 1957 album.