065 | Zoot Sims | In a Sentimental Mood | Sonet SNTF 932 | 1985
Just a small trio format for this album, Zoot Sims joined by Red Mitchell on bass and Rune Gustafsson on guitar, the album recorded just outside Stockholm at the Sonet headquarters on 21 November, 1984. One of the ‘Four Brothers’ sax section of Woody Herman’s Big Band, Sims went on to enjoy a fruitful career as a major league saxophone player on both tenor and alto and later the soprano sax. Coming from a musical family, Sims came to music at an early age, citing as early influences Lester Young, Ben Webster and Don Byas amongst others. From his first recordings in 1950, Zoot Sims released dozens of albums over a long career, In a Sentimental Mood being his final recording, the album released in the same year as his death in 1985. With just guitar and bass accompaniment, Sims has the freedom to play a laid back set, emphasised perfectly by Duke Ellington’s title song. Sims may have been feeling sentimental when he recorded these six selections, but the playing is far from the saccharin sweetness the title suggests, with much space awarded to the rhythm section, who are free to improvise throughout. ‘Gone With the Wind’, the lengthy album opener, is a masterful arrangement of the song named for the famous novel and film. Other highlights include ‘Autumn Leaves’ and ‘Sweet Lorraine’, with the one Sims original ‘Castle Blues’, a fine and cool bluesy workout from a player who died far too young at 59, a sax man still in his prime, struck down by cancer in the spring of the same year of release.
Playlist:
Cherokee – Clifford Brown (New Star on the Horizon)
Gone With the Wind – Zoot Sims (In a Sentimental Mood)
Balcony Jogger – Jon Bentley (Go Ahead)
Molly’s Mild – Elton Dean, Steve Miller & Pip Pyle (Home Brewed)
Subconscious Lee – Lee Konitz (Subconscious-Lee)
In a Sentimental Mood – Zoot Sims (In a Sentimental Mood)
Summer Night – Shelly Manne (The West Coast Sound)
Bassoon Blues – Illinois Jacquet (The Message)
Tis Autumn – Zoot Sims (In a Sentimental Mood)
Candy – Lou Donaldson (Gravy Train)
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374 | Amazing Blondel | A Few Faces | Bell SBLL 131 | 1970
I haven’t seen a copy of Amazing Blondel’s 1970 debut album on the original Bell label for under three figure prices for quite a while. I think the last time I saw one was a few years ago on the wall of a record shop in Elsecar, which I believe had a £200 tag. I’d already collected four of the band’s early albums without any knowledge of this album, always having believed Evensong to be the band’s first, released in the same year. Perhaps the band wanted to keep it quiet, as this was an early incarnation of the band that didn’t come to prominence on the British rock scene having been joined by a third member (Eddie Baird) and signing to Chris Blackwell’s Island label after being introduced to the label boss by the band Free, who were keen fans. Both Free and Mott the Hoople would invite the band to support them on tour and to this day, I can’t imagine what a Mott fan would make of them. A Few Faces is really the link between John Gladwin and Terry Wincott’s previous rock band Methusaleh and the pseudo-Elizabethan minstrel outfit named for the French trouvère and poet/musician from the Middle Ages, Blondel de Nesle. Early signs of the move towards this delicate and idiosyncratic music can be spotted with such songs as ‘Season of the Year’, which wouldn’t have been out of place on their next album Evensong, though the album opener ‘Saxon Lady’, with it’s heavy use of the Indian sitar, is markedly different from anything that would follow in Amazing Blondel’s later repertoire. The album also includes an early version of ‘Shepherd’s Song’, which would become a staple of the later trio’s live set, which they soon referred to as their ‘fun number’, introducing the song with jokes about the use of the crumhorn. ‘Love Sonnet’ also shows an early indication of the musical route the band would soon take once signed to Island. Unlike the band’s next three albums, the trio of Gladwin, Wincott and Baird are joined here by a handful of friends, Gary Taylor on bass, Chris Karan on Congas, Percussion and Tabla and Clem Cattini on drums, with further arrangements by none other than Big Jim Sullivan. A much overlooked album.
Playlist:
John – Methuselah (Methuselah)
Saxon Lady – Amazing Blondel (A Few Faces)
Pavan – Amazing Blondel (Evensong)
Spring Season – Amazing Blondel (Evensong)
Celestial Light – Amazing Blondel (Fantasia Lindum)
Seascape – Amazing Blondel (England)
A Spring Air – Amazing Blondel (Live Abroad)
Shepherd’s Song – Amazing Blondel (Live Abroad)
Young Man’s Fancy – Blondel (Blondel)
Benedictus Es Domine – Amazing Blondel (Restoration)
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