Trucks is joined on this album by an all-star cast including Susan Tedeschi and Doyle Bramhall II. Tracks include a said-to-be-tasty cover of Dylan's "Down In The Flood." For a more in-depth rundown of the new album, be sure to check out the review by BC's own Pico (who will incidentally also be along in just a second to talk about the new one from the Blue Note 7).
Joshua Redman returns with the Sonny Rollins influenced jazz of Compass. Top reissues and deluxe editions this week include a 3-disc box of Bee Gees, in the form of the Gibbs' psychedelic sixties-pop opus Odessa; a reissue of the long sought after second solo album from Love's Arthur Lee; and a deluxe edition of last year's The Age of Nero from metallurgists Satyricon.
Now, here's Pico to tell us all about the Blue Note 7:
In 1939, German immigrant Alfred Lion founded Blue Note Records along with Max Margulis as a label dedicated to signing and recording jazz and blues artists. Over the years, this label became a central part of jazz history itself, as it became the home for seminal recordings by Thelonius Monk, Bud Powell, Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Lee Morgan, Wynton Marsalis, Joe Lovano and the just-deceased Freddie Hubbard, amongst an enviably large roster of other notables.
To commemorate seventy years of this iconic label, current label owner EMI Group is today releasing a CD by The Blue Note 7, as an all-star tribute band consisting of members of the current generation of jazz lions. The Blue Note 7 album is called Mosaic, a carefully chosen collection of eight songs which the group felt salutes the label and some of its most vital musicians.
The songs range from the overly familiar (Herbie Hancock's "Dolphin Dance") to the less obvious but still solid choices (Horace Silver's "The Outlaw"). The renditions given by these seven, led by its pianist and musical director Bill Charlap, are clean and virtually flawless, but lack much of the edge and imagination of the original versions. Nonetheless, there are some fine individual performances here and there, such as Peter Bernstein's perfectly played, graceful lines on the Grant Green staple, "Idle Moments," for instance. The full album can be streamed here.
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