BLP 5041

The Amazing Bud Powell - Volume 2

Released - 1954

Recording and Session Information

WOR Studios, NYC, August 14, 1953
Bud Powell, piano; George Duvivier, bass; Art Taylor, drums.

BN510-6 tk.8 Autumn In New York
BN509-1 tk.9 Reets And I
BN511-2 tk.17 Sure Thing
BN512-2 tk.20 Collard Greens And Black-Eyed Peas
BN513-0 tk.21 Polka Dots And Moonbeams
BN514-1 tk.23 I Want To Be Happy
BN515-0 tk.25 Audrey
BN516-0 tk.27 The Glass Enclosure

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Reets And I	Bennie Harris	August 14 1953
Autumn In New York	Vernon Duke	August 14 1953
I Want To Be Happy	Vincent Youmans	August 14 1953
Sure Thing	Kern-Gershwin	August 14 1953
Side Two
Glass Enclosure	Bud Powell	August 14 1953
Collard Greens And Black-Eye Peas	Oscar Pettiford	August 14 1953
Polka Dots and Moonbeams	Burke-Van Heusen	August 14 1953
Audrey	Bud Powell	August 14 1953

Liner Notes

Between these covers lies the harvest of a journey through the mind of Bud Powell. It is a journey in which beauty and darkness, pleasure and sorrow are to be gleaned along the way; for this mind is a strange land, endowed with a glow of genius yet beset by illness and deprivation.

Bud Powell's career has been an erratic one, gregarious months along 52nd Street alternating with lonely months in the hospital. For all the inconsistency of his march to fame, he has managed to earn the unanimous admiration of his contemporaries and to forge an ineradicable place for himself in the international hall of jazz fame.

A year ago, on his return from a year's absence, he was approached by Alfred Lion of Blue Note Records to make his first return to the recording studios since his illness. Bud at that time was enjoying two weeks' vacation between engagements at Birdland.

The session that resulted was no hasty, impromptu venture. It was the product of many meetings between Lion, Powell and Duvivier and Taylor. Each tune was selected to show a certain aspect of Bud's style, and the entire set offers a comprehensive picture of this extraordinary talent.

The choice of a rhythm section for Bud could not have been happier. George Duvivier's superlative sound and beat have graced the big bands of Lunceford and Millinder, the vocal accompaniments of Lena Horne and Nellie Lutcher, the guitar quintets of Chuck Wayne and Johnny Smith. Arthur Taylor, a 24 year old New Yorker, has worked exclusively with small modern groups, rounding out the rhythmic impulses with Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins and others. Taylor complements and "feeds" Bud's solos as every drummer should.

Reets And I is built on a theme by Bennie Harris, trumpeter and early acolyte of the bop giants, and is named for Bennie and his wife. Its foundation is a chord pattern used for many tunes ( such as All God's Children Got Rhythm) but its melody is entirely original and Bud's improvisations on the familiar pattern are suggestive of some of his earlier work.

Autumn In New York is a remarkable demonstration of Bud's ability to retain the essence of a popular melody while investing it with his own personality. There is no "Martian music", nothing in the way of deliberate attempts to distort the basic harmonic structure of the original piece. An interesting departure, though, is Bud's overlapping of the 24th and 25th measures, which has the effect of telescoping the melody into a 31-bar chorus.

In I Want To Be Happy Bud changes the melody slightly on the third and fourth measures to make them fit a diminished chord, giving the tune's line a smoother overall quality. Here George Duvivier, who worked closely with Bud in preparing the date, has a remarkable chorus on his own. The protracted ending is a Powell characteristic intriguingly in evidence on this excursion.

The remarkable cooperation between Bud and George is especially impressive on Sure Thing during the passages on which Bud's left hand and George's bass line are locked in unison. The tune, incidentally, is not Neal Hefti's instrumental, but a 1943 Jerome Kern song from Cover Girl.

The second side opens with what may soon gain stature as Bud's greatest composition. Class Enclosure was built up gradually from an odd theme that Alfred Lion heard him play one night when visiting his apartment off Times Square. Greatly impressed, Lion asked Bud what he was playing. He replied he had something in his mind he was trying to express. Lion then repeatedly asked Bud and encouraged him to develop the piece; a few days later he heard the idea further advanced, and was asked whether he would care to take a chance on it for inclusion in the record date. By the next time Lion heard it, Powell had worked out the entire pattern and Duvivier, who learned it along with him, put the parts down in writing.

Glass Enclosure, despite its brevity, manages to display each of Bud Powell's qualities in the areas of melody, harmony and rhythm. The work is more or less divided into four movements: the first somewhat on a maestoso level, the next a swinging fragment on two 10-bar phrases; then a pensive yet flowing movement with a stirring bowed-bass underline, followed by a reminder of the first movement.

In sharp contrast, the next piece, Collard Greens and Black-Eye Peas, offers something as down-to-earth as that southern dish: the basic 12-bar blues, in a setting first fashioned by Oscar Pettiford (and once recorded by him under the title Blues In The Closet). Here, after playing the theme, Bud is on an ad-lib blues kick for seven choruses, of which the third and fourth are shared with Duvivier, the next two with Taylor.

There have been many treatments by jazz musicians, especially in the past year or two, of the lovely Johnny Burke-Jimmy Van Heusen melody Polka Dots and Moonbeams, written in 1939. While hugging the melody throughout as closely as if he were Garner, Bud sparks it with that unique incisiveness of touch, that perfect timing and placement of rich right-hand chords, that unmistakable Bud Powell sound.

Audrey, named for Mrs. Powell, has a theme that is simpler in melodic line than in construction. A careful inspection of the repeated main phrase, which proceeds downward an octave in uneasy stages, reveals a group of two 12-bar stanzas; and indeed, Bud proceeds from there into some choruses on the regular blues.

If you know Bud Powell only by repute, or through the media of radio and night clubs, this LP is the definitive set to represent him in your collection. If you already have his earlier recordings (such as Blue Note 5003), you will probably agree with me that in this group of performances Bud Powell is at his peak. Let us hope that today, at the age of 30, he may have a future studded with many more such achievements.

—LEONARD FEATHER ( Down Beat Magazine)

Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover design by JOHN HERMANSADER

BLP 5003

The Amazing Bud Powell

Released - 1952

Recording and Session Information

WOR Studios, NYC, August 9, 1949
Fats Navarro, trumpet #1,2; Sonny Rollins, tenor sax #1,2; Bud Powell, piano; Tommy Potter, bass; Roy Haynes, drums.

BN360-2 Bouncing With Bud
BN361-3 Wail
BN364-0 You Go To My Head
BN365-0 Ornithology

WOR Studios, NYC, May 1, 1951
Bud Powell, piano; Curly Russell, bass #1,3; Max Roach, drums #1,3.

BN382-4 Un Poco Loco
BN383-0 Over The Rainbow
BN384-0 A Night In Tunisia
BN385-1 It Could Happen To You

See Also: BLP 1503

Session Photos

Photos: © Francis Wolff/ Blue Note Records

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Un Poco Loco	Bud Powell	May 1 1951
Over The Rainbow	Harold Arlen, Yip Harburg	May 1 1951
Ornithology	Benny Harris, Charlie Parker	August 9 1949
Wail	Bud Powell	August 9 1949
Side Two
A Night In Tunisia	Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Paparelli	May 1 1951
It Could Happen To You	Burke, Van Heusen	May 1 1951
You Go To My Head	John Coots, Haven Gillespie	August 9 1949
Bouncing With Bud	Gil Fuller, Bud Powell	August 9 1949

Liner Notes

...

BST 84430

Bud Powell - Alternate Takes

Released - 1985

Recording and Session Information

WOR Studios, NYC, August 9, 1949
Fats Navarro, trumpet; Sonny Rollins, tenor sax; Bud Powell, piano; Tommy Potter, bass; Roy Haynes, drums.

BN360-0 Bouncing With Bud (alternate take 1)
BN360-1 Bouncing With Bud (alternate take 2)
BN361-0 Wail (alternate take)
BN362-0 Dance Of The Infidels (alternate take)

WOR Studios, NYC, August 14, 1953
Bud Powell, piano; George Duvivier, bass; Art Taylor, drums.

BN509-2 tk.10 Reets And I (alternate take)
BN512-0 tk.18 Collard Greens And Black-Eyed Peas (alternate take)

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, August 3, 1957
Bud Powell, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Art Taylor, drums.

tk.2 Blue Pearl (alternate take)

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, May 24, 1958
Bud Powell, piano; Sam Jones, bass; Philly Joe Jones, drums.

tk.4 John's Abbey (alternate take)

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, December 29, 1958
Bud Powell, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Art Taylor, drums.

tk.4 Comin' Up (alternate take)

CBS Studios, Paris, France, May 23, 1963
Dexter Gordon, tenor sax #1; Bud Powell, piano; Pierre Michelot, bass; Kenny Clarke, drums; Francis Wolff, producer.

(tk.3) Our Love Is Here To Stay
(tk.2) Like Someone In Love

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Bouncing With Bud [Take 1 ]	Bud Powell	August 9 1949
Bouncing With Bud [Take 2 ]	Bud Powell	August 9 1949
Wail	Bud Powell	August 9 1949
Dance Of The Infidels	Bud Powell	August 9 1949
Reets And I	Bud Powell	August 14 1953
Collard Greens And Black Eyed Peas	Bud Powell	August 14 1953
Blue Pearl	Bud Powell	August 3 1957
Side Two
John's Abbey	Bud Powell	May 24 1958
Comin' Up	Bud Powell	December 29 1958
Like Someone In Love	Burke/Van Heusen	May 23 1963
Our Love Is Here To Stay	Gershwin	May 23 1963

Liner Notes

Bud Powell was a genius in the pre-hype sense of the word. He was an artist wholly and uniquely unto himself. Drawing from the foundations of classical music (mostly Baroque) and jazz (mostly the be-bop that he helped create), he blended his extraordinary technique, power, swing, clarity and invention to achieve multi-layered art of astonishing depth.

It is commonly considered that Bud's peak was the late forties and very early fifties, when he had the most fire and creative consistency. His recorded output of the time, especially the Roost and Blue Note sessions that he led, seem to bear that out.

This album gathers all of the Powell performances worthy of issue, which have not appeared on his 5 Blue Note lps or his one sideman appearance for the label on Dexter Gordon's Our Man In Paris.

On August 8, 1949, the pianist made his first record date for Blue Note and his first with horns. While all of the master takes are available on The Amazing Bud Powell, volumes one and two (1503 and 1504), the four alternates herein were only anthologized into The Fabulous Fats Navarro, volumes one and two (1531 and 1532). Though Navarro and a young Sonny Rollins play very well, it is Bud's forceful improvisations that make these alternates so fascinating.

The pianist's 1951 trio date is contained completely in the two volumes of The Amazing Bud Powell, as are the master takes of his August 14, 1953 session with his working band of George Duvivier and Art Taylor. Issued here for the first time are alternate takes of Oscar Pettiford's Collard Greens And Black-Eyed Peas (more commonly known in later years as Blues In The Closet), which precedes the master take, and Little Benny Harris' Reets And l, which was done right after the original master.

By early to mid fifties, the frustration of being Black and an artist in one's own country, which has little use for either, compounded his long standing mental problems and the effects of bad habits that he acquired to ease the pain. His behavior and music became increasingly erratic. He even endured a long psychiatric stay in the hospital.

A long run of trio dates for Verve and RCA ended in February, 1957. Those performances ranged from poor to very good; unfortunately all of the material was issued without discrimination, Then Alfred Lion brought Bud back to Blue Note for three yearly albums.

These would be his only recordings until his first as a Paris resident in late 1960. And they had that indefinable Blue Note touch. Suddenly, his playing and composing rose to great heights. The grace and power and unyielding creativity of the old Bud were back! Moreover, there was a confidence evident throughout; all 3 dates had very few alternate takes, As Paul Chambers said of one, "This was one of those lucky one-take dates—maybe on some numbers two at most, but we were generally happy with the first take on most of the numbers."

Bud! The Amazing Bud Powell, volume three (BST 81571 1571) was recorded on August 3, 1957 with Art Taylor, Paul Chambers and, on three tunes, trombonist Curtis Fuller The alternate take of Blue Pear was a second take, made right after the master. The tune is a C minor theme with chord changes that are somewhat reminiscent of Tadd Dameron's. This performance is taken at a slightly different tempo and offers greater piano-bass interplay in what was the bass solo spot on the master take.

For Bud's session of May 24, 1968, which produced Times Waits (1598), the pianist is accompanied by Sam Jones and Philly Joe Jones. That original album included an alternate take of Sub City. To that, we add a alternate of John's Abbey, a fast, memorable, typically Bud melody line that would become a frequent staple in his repertoire hereafter. His playing looks back to his forties be-bop style of single note flurries from the right hand with chords and punctuations from the left. Incidentally, Blue Pearl and John's Abbey have been included Japanese and/or European Blue Note boxed set anthologies in recent years.

But issued here for the first time is an alternate take of Comin' Up from the December 29, 1958 date that produced The Scene Chqnges (4009). Certainly the Monday night Latin bands at Birdland helped cause a cross-fertilization of this musical community with the jazz world. This very unique Powell original, built on a six-note motif with shifting sections, is a prime example. This alternate is about two minutes shorter than the master take, but no less unusual or fascinating. This experiment is an exciting and worthy aside in the Powell legacy. Shortly after this last Blue Note date as a leader, Bud Powell was institutionalized again at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn. Upon his release in the spring, he moved to Paris, perhaps in search of some peace and artistic dignity. But the demons that had caused him so much pain all of his life pursued him for the rest of it.

In Paris, he formed a working trio with bassist Pierre Michelot and drummer Kenny Clarke. They worked and recorded with some frequency. Though Bud never again attained the consistent brilliance of the late forties or the Blue Note run of the late fifties, he was nonetheless playing quite well on most occasions.

This trio also backed up for recordings and concert appearances a variety of other expatriate Americans such as Don Byas, Idrees Suliemann and, as we have here, Dexter Gordon.

Dexter Gordon's Our Man In Paris, taped on May 23, 1963, was the saxophonist's first album since taking up residency in Paris. Actually, Kenny Drew was originally slated to do the date, but external circumstances prevented that. Dex had already prepared an album's worth of new music, when Frank Wolff arrived for the first rehearsal. But Bud seemed rather despondent and unfocused and unwilling to deal with any new material. Dex suggested calling the date off, but Wolff insisted that a bad rehearsal often leads to a great session. So they changed plans and selected a range of pop and jazz standards that Powell knew and liked.

The results were, needless to say, wonderful. The session was so fruitful that more than an album's worth of material was committed to tape. The two remaining titles are issued here for the first time. Gordon's beautiful reading of Our Love Is Here To Stay was the first tune of the day.

At the end of the day, Wolff apparently decided to go for one trio piece with Powell. The choice was Like Someone In Love (which Bud had recorded in 1954), done with typical Powell flair.

This then is a slice of the legacy of Bud Powell. In effect, this album is an addendum to the 5 Powell 12' albums and the Gordon lp. But even this document standing on its ownt is a dramatic testament to one of the rare geniuses of jazz who are talked about and immortalized, but rarely listened to for the true impact of their creations. Bud Powell's music doesn't need lip service; it needs to be absorbed. It can contribute so much to the future; it's just there for the taking, Take it!

Michael Cuscuna

BLP 4009

The Amazing Bud Powell - Volume 5 - The Scene Changes

Released - July 1959

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, December 29, 1958
Bud Powell, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Art Taylor, drums.

tk.1 The Scene Changes
tk.3 Down With It
tk.6 Comin' Up
tk.9 Duid Deed
tk.10 Cleopatra's Dream
tk.12 Gettin' There
tk.14 Crossin' The Channel
tk.16 Danceland
tk.17 Borderick

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff/Mosaic Images 
https://www.mosaicrecordsimages.com/

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Cleopatra's Dream	Bud Powell	29/12/1958
Duid Deed	Bud Powell	29/12/1958
Down with It	Bud Powell	29/12/1958
Danceland	Bud Powell	29/12/1958
Borderick	Bud Powell	29/12/1958
Side Two
Crossin' the Channel	Bud Powell	29/12/1958
Comin' Up	Bud Powell	29/12/1958
Gettin' There	Bud Powell	29/12/1958
The Scene Changes	Bud Powell	29/12/1958

Liner Notes

IT IS one of the ironies of Bud Powell’s career that while his contemporaries have constantly looked to him for inspiration and guidance, his treatment in the musical press has been only intermittently observant and all too often concerned with his psychological and professional problems. A glance through the large body of jazz literature dumped on the market in recent years reveals that alone among the navigators of modern jazz he has been bypassed, while others who could not have existed musically without him hove earned fuller consideration.

Bud was a figure of powerful impact among musicians as early as 1945, when he began to be heard often in the combos along 52nd Street. He has never ceded his position as the most vital of the original bop pianists; yet there is not a single sentence about him, for instance, in Hear Me Talkin’ to Yo, while in the André Hodeir book there is a brief dismissal with these words: “Circumstances that we won’t dwell on here have prevented Bud Powell from achieving a full realization of his immense possibilities. It is in some of his quick-tempo solos, and perhaps only there, that we must look for an echo of that world of musical madness into which Charlie Parker tried to lead us.”

It is my belief that M. Hodeir underestimates the extent of Bud’s achievements; that he may be confusing cause and effect in relating the “circumstances” of Bud’s life and the attainment of his goals. Moreover, his successes manifestly are not merely a matter of dazzling the listener with up tempos, as the present album demonstrates.

Even Barry Ulanov, the first and most perceptive critic to study Bud seriously, was inclined in his History of Jazz in America to accentuate the negative: “He will set up an intriguing pattern of ideas, aptly constructed, brightly developed, and then suddenly will break the structure and the development to repeat one or two of his phrases in a seemingly endless and senseless reiteration. His solos sometimes hove a nagging, fragmentary quality, like a series of boxes piled precariously on top of one another, without point or purpose.” But, he is careful to add, there are other solos that “swing furiously from the first to the last bar, that add lines in o constant enrichment of ideas, that gave bop its only real piano voice.” It seems to me that the fragmentary qualities imputed by Ulanov (this book was published in 1952) may have been observed in person a decode ago but are rarely found on his more typical recordings. Listen to the third and fourth choruses in Crossin’ the Channel. The boxes are piled in a careful, orderly heap; there is nothing precarious about their placement. This is true of most of Bud’s best work, a substantial proportion of which can be found in his Blue Note LPs.

A curious aspect of this latest set is its emphasis on minor keys. On the first side all but the closing track are minor compositions; a fifth minor theme is heard on the second side In Gettin’ There. More important than the matter of mode is the happy circumstance that Bud felt very much like blowing on the day of this session, pausing less often than usual for bass or drum interludes and maintaining a consistently inventive and technically impeccable level throughout.

Cleopatra’s Dream, the opening track, typifies the prevailing temper; a medium-bright minor theme, it is uninterrupted Powell throughout, its melody a simple attractive structure on a tonic-and-dominant base, His improvisations fluctuating between long single-note lines, a couple of excursions into octave unison lines and one brief passage using chords horizontally.

Duid Deed, slower and still minor, reveals itself immediately as a typical bop line of the kind that prevailed in the mid-40s. The familiar construction — one beat rest followed by a four-note phrase and a three-note phrase, the two final notes being a “bebop” on the first beat of the second bar — has persisted for close to fifteen years for a logical reason: it swings.

Down With It, too, is unremittingly bop, its extensive single-note lines recalling the halcyon days of the revolution; one can almost feel at times that on the next chorus Fats Navarro may take over. But then Paul Chambers walks up to the microphone, bow in hand, and we are reminded of a newer generation, and of the younger talents that are constantly added as the scene changes.

Danceland presumably was so titled because its moderato pace and basically stated main phrase — starting with eight quarter notes, each right on the beat — combine to lend it a simple and danceoble quality.

Borderick is, by Powell standards, a maverick. Dedicated to his three-year-old son Earl Douglas John Powell, for whom he improvised it one night, it is virtually a melodic nursery rhyme, a tuneful eight-bar fragment that is repeated, with syncopations and other minor alterations, throughout the entire brief performance here. The second chorus includes a passage in which Bud sounds as if he has been listening to Fats Waller. Aside from being an ideal weapon with which to confuse one’s friends on a blindfold-test basis, this track is valuable in the reflection of a seldom-considered aspect of Bud’s personality, his life as a family man.

Crossin’ The Channel is not related to the early bop blues recorded some years back by Winding, Mulligan and Wallington. An up tempo theme that sounds like a reworked scale or exercise, it is notable not only for the continuity of the improvised passages, as discussed above, but also for the firmness and strength with which Bud makes his statements. This assurance, a quality associated with his best performances and missing on some of his less felicitous recording dotes, is a quintessential component of the true Powell character. Locking the unique dynamism, the peculiar articulation that can only be produced exactly in this manner by the originator himself, Bud’s imitators tend to sound like victims of pernicious musical anemia when they parade the identical phrases.

Comin' Up, which runs almost eight minutes, is one of Bud’s longest recorded piano solos and certainly one of the most strikingly different. There are moments when this could be the work of a pianist in a mambo band, yet every once in a while a seemingly trivial dynamic or harmonic touch will emphasize the important difference that lifts it out of that mundane zone. Starting with a six-note statement by Art Taylor, then taken up by Chambers and finally by Powell, it is built around a phrase that acquired its character from the opening and closing F (in the key of E Flat). There is a benevolent, cheerful note in the Latin passages here that may seem atypical to most Powell students; personally I am past the stage where it surprises me to be surprised by Bud. Comin' Up might have been the product of an evening spent listening to Machito or Joe Loco, yet there is in it something that Powell alone could create. Art Taylor’s conservative supplementary rhythmic impetus, a notable asset to the entire album, is particularly valuable here.

Gettin’ There reverts to the minor mode, of medium-bright tempo. During this track I was particularly impressed by the horn-like nature of much of Powell’s ad libbing; try listening to this while imagining the some lines performed by, say, Clifford Brown. If Earl Hines was the original trumpet style pianist, the concept is by no means incompatible with the even more essentially horizontal ideations of Bud.

The Scene Changes is another boppish theme, one that could have been written by Bird, with a basically upward trend to the melody. This time there is a pause for solo by Chambers and Taylor and Bud goes out with one of those sudden bop endings, the kind that become boring while they were being overdone during the 1940s but now have some validity again when not used immoderately.

When Bud sow the cover photo for this album, showing him with Earl Douglas John Powell, he immediately reacted by suggesting: “Call the album The Scene Changes.” In terms of generations and hierarchies he was right; yet in some respects the scene is less changed than it might seem to be. It changed when Bird and Pres departed, yet the central scene, of which they were an unvarying focal point, remained unfadingly printed in our minds, a photograph still immutable in a setting where everything else seemed restless and questing. Bud Powell is part of the changing scene, true; but as long as he remains true to himself, to the fundamental qualities he brought to music, a certain part of the scene will remain unchanged, and I for one will be among the grateful.

—LEONARD FEATHER (Author of The Book of Jazz: Meridian Books)

Alfred Lion of Blue Note extends special thanks to Oscar Goodstein, the genial manager of “Birdland”, for his cooperation in making this recording possible.

Cover Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design by REID MILES
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT THE SCENE CHANGES

I've always considered cover photo on this album to be one of the most evocative in the annals of jazz. Bud Powell sits at the keyboard, lost in concentration, while his young son peeks out from the bass-clef end of the piano bench. It's as if the childlike innocence of a performance such as "Borderick" is emerging from the stem demeanor of the adult professional. Given that the professionaI in question is Bud Powell, Francis Wolff's moving dual portrait also suggests that Bud's younger and more consistently brilliant self is forever looking over the shoulder of the older and often tragically erratic musician Powell became for the majority of his working life.

Such is the price of early genius, even for those who did not suffer the emotional problems and ill treatment Powell faced. When you start at the Olympian level represented by the music on The Amazing Bud Powell Volume (also available in the RVG series, as are all of Powell's other Blue Note sessions) you will forevermore be held to that incredible standard. Yet when The Scene Changes was recorded in 1958, Powell could no longer channel what Max Harrison once described as his "admittedly delirious emotions" with the relentless eloquence that suffuses his playing on the 1949 Modernists recordings that feature Fats Navarro and Sonny Rollins, or the 1951 trio date with Curly Russell and Max Roach that produced three different. dazzling takes of "Un Poco Loco. " The obvious point of comparison here is "Comin' Up," which recalls "Un Poco Loco" through its use of Latin rhythms and a harmonically static montuno structure during the improvisation. Given the deliberation of Powell's improvising on "Comin' Up," how could it help but sound second-best?

If we didn't know "Un Poco Loco," however — or, better yet, if this was presented as the performance of a previously unknown pianist — we would have an easier time appreciating how wonderful "Comin' Up" and the other performances on this album really are. Leonard Feather's original liner notes would not have had to go through so much of the special pleading that Powell's supporters felt compelled to include in discussions of his best late-fifties work; but of course there was the younger Bud, lurking in the background, leading us to overlook such strengths as the inspired pacing of "Cleopatra's Dream," the whimsy of "Borderick," the relaxed aura of "Duid Deed" and the fluency of "Down With It" and "Gettin' There." "Crossin' The Channel" may get closest to early Powell in its brisk mood, but it also delights in its use of octaves and chords, and in the more pronounced impact of Powell's oft-unjustly-maligned left hand.

Another point that gets lost in the shadow cast by Powell's early genius is the ongoing quality of his compositions. Even when revisiting familiar territory, he finds strong thematic ideas to frame his improvisations. Hence "The Scene Changes" goes over the terrain of his great "John's Abbey" with similar success, and "Duid Deed" gives a more lyrical spin to the idea Powell used on his earlier Monk-like tune "Mediocre." "Cleopatra's Dream" also stands out as a refreshing entry point into a chord sequence that bears resemblance to "Autumn Leaves." And as usual, Powell writes melodies on his bridges, rather than leaving them open for blowing as was the frequent bebop practice.

Producer Alfred Lion is always credited with an ability to make Powell feel comfortable in the recording studio, and part of that ability had to do with assembling the right supporting cast. Art Taylor was Powell's drummer of choice between 1953 and '58, and Taylor's masterful use of brushes is on display throughout this collection. He and bassist Paul Chambers had already jointly supported Powell on his 1957 Blue Note album Bud!, and were also a rhythm team of long standing in Miles Davis's working groups, on the trio recordings of Davis pianist Red Garland, and in numerous other studio sessions. They knew how to swing together and how to support a pianist together, and their contribution to the success of this session should not go unnoted.

Powell tended to be a one-take artist in the recording studio, but he did produce an alternate of "Comin' Up" that benefits from greater focus and concision than the master take. The album title was a prophetic stroke, for Powell and family left the U.S. in 1959 to settle in Paris. Powell's time on the Left Bank provided more material for his legend and inspired the Bertrand Tavernier film 'Round Midnight. It also offered additional opportunities to play with the inspiration heard on this underrated session.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2003