Kenny Burrell: K.B. Blues (Blue Note Tone Poet series) [BLUE NOTE]

Why you'll love it

This Tone Poet pressing comes on 180g vinyl in a gatefold jacket. Burrell leads a hard bop dream team, with Horace Silver on piano, Hank Mobley on tenor, Doug Watkins on bass and Louis Hayes on drums.

This edition

• Blue Note Tone Poet series
• 180g vinyl
• Gatefold jacket
• Mono

About the album

Blue Note's vaults have given up some lovely surprises over the years, and this one took the scenic route. Alfred Lion recorded the session in 1957, with Kenny Burrell still in his twenties and already one of the most in-demand guitarists in New York, but the tapes waited until 1979 to come out, and then in Japan, on the Japanese Blue Note label.

It opens with Silver's own "Nica's Dream," stretched past nine minutes with Mobley in fine, easy voice, before Burrell's "Out For Blood" turns up the heat. Side two is all blues: two takes of the title track, both relaxed and deep in the pocket, and Lester Young's "D. B. Blues," with Watkins and Hayes swinging hard underneath. Burrell's tone is warm and clean throughout, every phrase sitting just right.

The music later turned up on CD as part of Introducing Kenny Burrell: The First Blue Note Sessions. Twenty-two years on a shelf followed by a trip to Tokyo is a more interesting life than most of our stock has had, and it shows.

Also at Kops: more Kenny Burrell on vinyl · browse Classic Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Blue Note (cat# B0034797-01), a reissue of the 1957 album.