Jackie McLean: Let Freedom Ring (Blue Note Tone Poet series) [BLUE NOTE]

Why you'll love it

This Tone Poet edition is mastered by Kevin Gray from the original analog tapes, pressed on 180g vinyl at RTI and packed in a tip-on gatefold jacket. The Penguin Guide to Jazz gives it four stars and puts it in its Core Collection.

This edition

• Blue Note Tone Poet series
• Mastered from the original analog tapes by Kevin Gray
• 180g vinyl pressed at RTI
• Tip-on gatefold jacket
• Stereo mix

About the album

Jackie McLean came up in hard bop, playing with Miles Davis, Charles Mingus and Art Blakey, but by the early 1960s he could hear Ornette Coleman and the new thing knocking at the door. On March 19, 1962, at Van Gelder Studio, he let them in, keeping the blues at the heart of it and pushing everything else further out.

Walter Davis Jr. plays piano, Herbie Lewis bass and Billy Higgins drums. "Melody for Melonae," named for his daughter, runs over thirteen minutes and is where McLean first unleashed those piercing upper-register cries. "Rene," for his son, is a twelve-bar blues with a twist, "Omega" heads into more open, modal ground, and Bud Powell's ballad "I'll Keep Loving You" is the one tune he didn't write.

AllMusic's Steve Huey reckons its success opened Blue Note's doors to a wave of modernists, and it sits with One Step Beyond among McLean's finest. Four songs, three of them for family members, which is a lovely gesture and also a very tidy way of avoiding arguments at Christmas.

Also at Kops: more Jackie McLean on vinyl · browse Classic Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Blue Note (cat# BST 84106), a reissue of the 1963 album.