Jazz for When You're Alone [32 Jazz]

Read About This Recording

Jazz, as with the most rewarding and timeless art forms, covers all types of emotions. The performances of jazz musicians and singers can make one laugh or cry, be joyful or wistful and can inspire nostalgia, new revelations or sensual feelings. Because jazz ranges in styles from Dixieland to free improvisations, swing to fusion, it can serve virtually any purpose.

This disc is a mood music collection originally compiled in the late 1990s. Nearly 40 years earlier, the Moodsville label (a subsidiary of Prestige) released quite a few sets by top jazz artists playing ballads at slow and relaxed tempos. This recording has the same idea except that it is a multi-artist collection (with each selection showcasing a different jazz musician) and most of the music dates from the 1970s and '80s. The CD is full of performances that succeed as backgrounds for either romantic situations or for one's solitary thoughts.

Jazz for When You're Alone starts with a gentle ballad by tenor-saxophonist Willis Jackson and then includes one number apiece from pianists Red Garland ("The Second Time Around") and Les McCann, saxophonists Houston Person, Sonny Stitt ("Sweet and Lovely"), Vincent Herring and Phil Woods (a haunting "The Summer Knows"), guitarists Larry Coryell and Pat Martino and trumpeters Wallace Roney and Donald Byrd. Sidemen include pianists Jaki Byard and Jacky Terrasson and tenor-saxophonist Joe Henderson.

This collection was very popular when it was released and the performances communicate just as well now as they did a decade ago. They even succeed when one is not alone!

—Scott Yanow

Contents

Willis Jackson/Pat Martino: Blue Velvet; Red Garland: The Second Time Around; Houston Person: Everything Happens to Me; Les McCann: Sunny; Larry Coryell: Around Midnight; Sonny Stitt: Sweet and Lovely; Wallace Roney: Lost; Vincent Herring: Stars Fell on Alabama; Donald Byrd: That's All There is to Love; Phil Woods: The Summer Knows; Pat Martino: You Don't Know What Love Is.