Untitled Document
     
Advertisement Click to advertise with us!
     

CD Review: Quincy Jones 'Basie and Beyond'

Gandalfe

Striving to play the changes in a melodic way.
Staff member
Administrator
Basie and Beyond, Quincy Jones and Sammy Nestico 2000

I luv this CD having only discovered it last year. I've already purchased six of the charts for my Big Band from this CD. Here's a decent review from Amazon:

To those post-baby boomers weaned on Michael Jackson's Thriller, this straight-ahead jazz date by the superproducer Quincy Jones, with Count Basie orchestra arranger Sammy Nestico, may seem out of place--a relic of Jones's distant jazz past. But to Q's old-school fans who grew up hearing him with Ray Charles and Lionel Hampton, and on albums like This is How I Feel About Jazz (1957) and Walkin' in Space, this CD is a long-awaited return to his roots.

Jones arranged and produced a number of Basie LPs in the 1960s, and he also arranged the music when Frank Sinatra and Basie convened on classics like It Might As Well Be Spring, so it should surprise no one how well Basie and Beyond swings. The band is composed of topnotch West Coast session men, featuring flutist Hubert Laws, guitarist Paul Jackson Jr., and tenor saxophonist Ernie Watts.

Along with a few no-nonsense tunes by Nestic--including "Ya Gotta Try ... Harder!," "The Joy of Cookin'," and "Out of the Night"--the date features Jones's several rare 1950s and '60s tunes: a midtempo update of "Jelly Roll" highlighted by tenor saxophonist Watts's Coltrane-ish lines. The Tadd Dameron-tinged ballad "Quintessence" and the late-night Kansas City stroll of "The Witching Hour" show Q's still got it. --Eugene Holley Jr.
 
This is an awesome album!!!!!

I played the arrangement of Lissett on my mini recital. But I played the solo on Tenor instead of Soprano.
 
I love the soprano solos on Lisette and Grace so much that I'm hard pressed to work in them with my tenor. And my family sez the soprano solos are some of the best work I've done to date.

Soprano sax took many years to find my sound, but now I'm really into it. Still the intonation in the high ranges, even on an instrument as fine as the Yanagisawa 992, remain a target area for me to improve upon.
 
Back
Top Bottom