Gil Melle - The Complete Blue Note 50s Sessions (1952-56)

Gil Melle - The Complete Blue Note 50s Sessions (1952-56)

jazz | 2cd | eac-flac-cue-log-cover | 835MB

Blue Note Connoisseur series

Allmusic:
Blue Note raids the back of its vaults for all four of Melle's long out of print 10" LPs, plus the 12" Patterns in Jazz, in order to place back in circulation a musician who had been nearly invisible to the jazz world for a good three decades. Though Melle's entertaining self-penned liner notes may be outrageously self-aggrandizing, this collection leaves little doubt that he was (and remains) a marvelous saxophonist and an intriguing composer who hasn't been given his due. On the early sides, Melle plays an erudite, relaxed, always musical tenor sax, and "Transition" marks his recorded debut on baritone, which he uses in a thoughtful, even quizzical manner for the remainder of the set. As a composer, Melle was very much the uncompromising cool bopper, but was also equipped with a fascinating mind of his own. His first session is also the most startling: "Four Moons" is brilliant in its Kentonian harmonic way, with vibraphone striking the chords; so is his most famous jazz composition "The Gears," with its Monica Dell scat vocal lead doubled by vibraphone. Further on in the set, Melle does away with the piano in the cool tradition, but gives the lineup an unorthodox twist by using a guitarist (Tal Farlow, Lou Mecca, or Joe Cinderella) in the keyboard role, and a trombonist (Eddie Bert or the swinging, vastly underrated Urbie Green) or even a tuba (Don Butterfield) on the front line. He also employs consistently first-class rhythm sections, with Max Roach and a young Joe Morello among the drummers. For those super-collectors who may have the extremely rare originals (now worth hundreds of dollars each), there is one unreleased track, "The Nearness of You"; the digitally remastered sound, flaws in the master tapes aside, is excellent.

Tracks
cd1
01 - Four Moons
02 - The Gears
03 - Mars
04 - Sunset Concerto
05 - Cyclotron
06 - October
07 - Under Capricorn
08 - Venus
09 - Lover Man
10 - Spellbound
11 - Transition
12 - A Lion Lives Here
13 - Timepiece
14 - Gingersnap
15 - The Nearness Of You
16 - Lullaby Of Birdland
17 - Ballade For Guitar
18 - Metropolitan
19 - Newport News
cd2
01 - Summertime
02 - Quadrille For Moderns
03 - Five Impressions Of Color
04 - Life Begins At Midnight
05 - Night Train To Wildwood
06 - Threadneedle Street
07 - Weird Valley
08 - The Set Break
09 - Moonlight In Vermont
10 - Long Ago And Far Away
11 - The Arab Barber Blues
12 - Nice Questions

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