Al Cohn – The Jazz Workshop - Four Brass, One Tenor (Speakers Corner)

Al Cohn was not as imaginative a tenor soloist as his colleague Zoot Sims. But a super arranger, a bread-and-butter but important task at such workshops. Manny Albam also played the baritone sax, but his real instrument was the pencil. With it he wrote not only jazz but also film and musical show arrangements. And he did so in a very multi-faceted way and adapted to the respective abilities of the instrumentalists.

For this "Jazz Workshop" the record company RCA-Victor could afford to ask excellent session musicians into the studio: from the Basie Band came Joe Newman, Freddie Green, from the Woody Herman Band Al Cohn, Bernie Glow, Nick Travis and the studio musicians Dick Katz, Buddy Jones and Osie Johnson sat there for days and nights anyway.

If you don't expect hot battles of five tenor players, no six tweeters on the trumpet, you will be sufficiently compensated with this LP with swinging, relaxed improvisations on basics like "Rosetta", "Linger Awhile", "I'm Coming Virginia "- and know that the sound of Lester Young was heard, cultivated and developed by these musicians.

Recorded: May 1955 at Webster Hall, New York City, in mono

Production: Jack Lewis

Reviews

"Jazz with a 'good mood guarantee' - sonically on the cutting edge." (LP, issue 1/2018)