BLP 4120

The Three Sounds - It Just Got To Be

Released - May 1963

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, December 13, 1960
Gene Harris, piano; Andrew Simpkins, bass; Bill Dowdy, drums.

tk.1 If I Were A Bell
tk.7 It Just Got To Be Me
tk.15 South Of The Border

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, December 14, 1960
Gene Harris, piano; Andrew Simpkins, bass; Bill Dowdy, drums.

tk.19 Blue 'N' Boogie
tk.20 The Nearness Of You
tk.30 One For Renee
tk.31 Stella By Starlight
tk.32 Real Gone

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
One for Renee	Gene Harris	14 December 1960
Stella by Starlight	Ned Washington, Young	14 December 1960
It Just Got to Be	Gene Harris	13 December 1960
If I Were a Bell	Frank Loesser	13 December 1960
Side Two
Blue 'n' Boogie	Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Paparelli	14 December 1960
The Nearness of You	Hoagy Carmichael, Ned Washington	14 December 1960
Real Gene	Gene Harris	14 December 1960
South of the Border	Jimmy Kennedy, Michael Carr	13 December 1960

Liner Notes

A SUCCESSFUL MARRIAGE is said to have been arranged in heaven...and seven years seems like a pretty good beginning. This seven year musical marriage between Gene Harris, Andrew Simpkins, and Bill Dowdy is rather remarkable...and accounts for the lack of strain, the ease with which they perform together. The history of jazz groups, even over a year's time, reads more like a train schedule than a listing of musicians. Here may be a record for longevity of association in this world...and one for which we can be grateful.

This is good a trio, particularly good because of the "wholeness" of their approach. You never feel a pull away from an agreed upon concept by any of these three men. I personally am glad to see another record to add to the collection of music I particularly like to play.

Bill Dowdy wrote the first cut, One for Renee, and you can hear the drummer's "percussive thinking" in this up-beat, "moving along" tune, regardless of which instrument is in front.

To me, Stella by Starlight is the cleanest, most black and white of all standards used by the jazz arrangers...and the Three Sounds allow it it's fine basic feelings; they never twist it or confuse it...never muddy it's clarity. The bass is particularly good here, the combination of Simpkins and Harris as perfect as we have come to expect.

It Just Got To Be, the title song by Gene Harris is a bluesy, down and sad piece with a retarded beat from the drum, then piano, then bass. Gene is at his best here with a most inventive piece of interpretation. You can hear how well he likes to play something good, really good, of his own. The different degrees of touch is interesting as he goes from one finger to what sounds like fifty.

An up-beat interpretation of Frank Loesser*s If I Were a Bell sets off the first side in high, swinging style. Though there is nothing particularly unusual about the arrangement, The Sounds always manage to please you with uniformly excellent ideas, and Simpkins does a nice break here.

Here's a nice sound! The often missed, often lamented boogie base... here cleverly supplied by Simpkins under Harris' 'bluish' piano playing, appropriately enough, Blue 'N Boogie, a Gillespie-Paparelli tune. Dowdy supplies an earthy, rythmically solid ground for this funky notion.

Then, into Hoagie Carmichael's quiet, soft and delicate The Nearness of You played in best ballad style with Harris' runs underlining the simple melody. Harris has a way of playing the most well-known tunes with an element of suspense... a sizable recommendation for any pianist.

Real Gone is another Harris composition; a driving, well felt-out melody featuring Simpkins doing, as always, some remarkably smooth continuity for a bass.

When I saw South of the Border, I sort of dreaded having to sit through any interpretation. But — what the Three Sounds do to this ancient pop tune! Here is where their long, close association pays off...in diamonds... and mutual senses of humor. In perfect timing necessary for the amusing, jerking style they have, happily, chosen here. Dowdy manages to keep an almost unbroken stream of soft, little sounds, beats and brushes running around under the plinking, hard hit Harris piano. There is so much going on here that you begin wondering what the fourth instrument might be.

Basically, the Three Sounds have a pleasant, easy to take style with enough surprises to keep you from taking them for granted...which you might do because they are so right playing together. No divorce here, fellows...you've got something good!

—LES DAVIS
Radio Station WNCN
New York

Cover Design by REID MILES
Photos by FRANCIS WOLFF
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER Users of Wide Range equipment should adjust their controls for RIAA curve.