GXF-3052

Kenny Burrell - K.B. Blues

Released - 1979

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, February 10, 1957
Hank Mobley, tenor sax; Horace Silver, piano; Kenny Burrell, guitar; Doug Watkins, bass; Louis Hayes, drums.

tk.3 Nica's Dream
tk.6 D.B. Blues
tk.7 K.B. Blues (alternate take)
tk.8 K.B. Blues
tk.9 Out For Blood

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Nica's Dream	Horace Silver	February 10 1957
Out For Blood	unknown	February 10 1957
Side Two
K.B. Blues	Kenny Burrell	February 10 1957
D.B. Blues	Lester Young	February 10 1957
K.B.Blues (Alternate Take)	Kenny Burrell	February 10 1957

Liner Notes

To Duke Ellington, Kenny Burrell was the most satisfying guitarist in all of jazz. A good many other musicians feel the same way as well as audiences throughout the world. What makes Burrell so unfailingly impressive is not virtuosity, although he surely has the technique to be as flashy as a fireworks display. Kenny's strength, however, is in his utter clarity — of emotions, melodic lines, jazz time. He plays from his feelings but with extraordinary illumination, for his is a disciplined musical intelligence that makes everything fit cleanly and invigoratingly.

As critic Don Bacon has emphasized, Kenny's playing never loses "touch or track of where it's been or where it's going. Which is another way of saying he is in contact with his musical roots as well as his dreams."

Burrell was born in Detroit on July 3, 1931, and he found his vocation on the guitar at the age of twelve. A city with a rich jazz heritage — Milt Jackson and Hank Jones emerged there in the 1940's — Detroit became an even more fertile ground for young jazz players in the 1950's. There were Barry Harris, Elvin Jones, Yusef Lateef, Donald Byrd — and Kenny Burrell who became the first president of a music society that these musicians formed.

Inevitably, as word spread of this deeply swinging, uncommonly tasteful guitarist, the calls came for him to expand his territory. Burrell worked with the Oscar Peterson trio; Benny Goodman; and then, during the 1960's, he became a mainstay of New York club and studio work. For a long time now, Kenny has headed his own groups — traveling through Western and Eastern European countries, as well as Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. Among the polls he has won are various Down Beat awards and the guitar division in the balloting conducted by Japan's Swing Journal.

As Kaye Harris accurately noted in Jazz Journal International, unlike those jazz players "who have deserted mainstream jazz for the more commercially successful disco sound, or the exploratory avant garde or crossover/fusion sound, he remains true to the clear, melodic rhythmic style which has endeared him to listners over the years — and he won't compromise. This is not to say, of course, that he stands still, because he is a guitarist of such versatility that his music spans all tastes."

Kenny's music also endures the earlier sessions retaining their sense of immediacy and a kind of timeless attraction. Indeed, because of his remarkable melodic inventiveness and spare musical integrity, Kenny's recordings are classic in the sense that they stay fresh through the decades. Like this 1957 date with a congenial group of improvisers who, like Kenny, were rapidly rising on the jazz scene. Bassist Doug Watkins, also from Detroit, had already worked with James Moody, Barry Harris, Kenny Dorham, and two of his colleagues on this date — Horace Silver and Hank Mobley.

Yet another Detroiter, the cracklingly energetic Louis Hayes, had been touring with Yusef Lateef and Horace Silver. As for the latter, Horace was already a key jazz figure. Having made his initial reputation with Stan Getz, Horace then added fire to the already fervent Art Blakey quintet before moving on to Coleman Hawkins, Oscar Pettiford, and Lester Young, among others. A year before this session was made, Horace had become leader of his own group. And all during this period, he was a vital force in countering the largely bloodless "West Coast school of jazz" by re-emphasizing the black roots of the music as he focused on jazz that shouted to gospel cadences and the thrust of the blues.

Hank Mobley also came to this date with a firm reputation, having worked with Max Roach, Dizzy Gillespie, and the Art Blakey Jazz Messengers that included Horace Silver. When Horace left to go out on his own, Mobley went with him. A concise assessment of his work is Ira Gitler's: "Mobley is descended from Charlie Parker but he has a rounder sound and less jagged style than most of the tenormen in this general area, although by no means does he lack emotional power."

And so these five crisply compatible musicians came together for what turned out to be an easefully authoritative demonstration of jazz essences — a Blue Note has never before been issued. Four of the tracks (one being an alternate take) are blues, and as is well known throughout the world, a jazz musician who cannot play the blues as if it were as natural to him as breathing ought to be in another line of work. Each of these five, as you can hear, were wholly at home in these blues. The other song, one of Horace Silver's most durable originals, Nica's Dream, was named after Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter (a member of the Rothschild family) who was a good friend of Charlie Parker, Ar Blakey, Thelonious Monk (who also named compositions after her), and other jazz musicians.

The music is so direct and lucid that it hardly requires any annotation. Worth noting, however, is Kenny Burrell's singing tone and flowing beat, along with the way — like all superior jazz players — he uses space as an integral part of his conception. Or, as Charles Mingus used to say, it is neither necessary nor desirable to play without pause because jazz ought to be like a conversation. There is also Burrell's finely attuned sense of dynamics, one of the reasons his playing continually holds attention.

Louis Hayes is briskly incisive, and Horace Silver's playing on the date is among his best during this period. He too was becoming a master of how to make space a part of swinging, and he had already developed the ability to shape lyrical melodic lines that were also lean and resilient. Hank Mobley was in particularly cohesive form the day of the date, and his solos are continually arresting.

Every once in a while, a session is made that is so well-fused an act of collective improvisation that it keeps on being rewarding, no matter what has happened since in the music. This was such a date.

— Nat Hentoff

75th Anniversary Reissue Notes

For many years, all that collectors knew of this session was the Blue Note single 45-1674 with "K.B. Blues" backed with Lester Young's "D.B. Blues". The band was essentially Horace Silver's quintet with Kenny Burrell in place of trumpet Donald Byrd.

When I first began investigating the Blue Note vaults in the mid '70s, this session was one of the first that I stumbled across. I played it for Horace Silver who thought the music was OK but forgettable. From my viewpoint, it was Kenny Burrell, Hank Mobley, Horace Silver, Doug Watkins and Louis Hayes and that anything these guys did was important. In a sense we were both right. This is wonderful music by great artists, but it is not the highpoint of any of their careers.

It is however a full album by these great musicians that no one knew to exist. Some tracks issued by Blue Note only as single were from sessions made just for the singles jukebox market. This however was not. Burrell and company expound on an early version of Silver's "Nica's Dream" and Burrell's "Out For Blood" as well as an alternate take of "K.B. Blues".

Michael Cuscuna