The Amazing Bud Powell | ||||
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Compilation album by | ||||
Released | April 1956 | |||
Recorded |
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Studio | WOR, NYC | |||
Genre | Bebop | |||
Label | Blue Note BLP 1503 (Vol. 1) BLP 1504 (Vol. 2) | |||
Producer | Alfred Lion | |||
Bud Powell chronology | ||||
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The Amazing Bud Powell | ||||
The Amazing Bud Powell, Vols. 1 & 2 are a pair of separate but related albums by American jazz pianist Bud Powell, recorded on August 8, 1949, May 1, 1951, and August 14, 1953, and released on Blue Note in 1956, compiling Powell's first three session for the label, originally released on ten-inch LPs as The Amazing Bud Powell (1952) and The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 2 (1954).
Powell recorded his first three session for Blue Note at WOR Studios in New York. In the first session, Powell performed in quintet with Fats Navarro, Sonny Rollins, Tommy Potter and Roy Haynes, and in trio with Potter and Haynes. In the second, Powell performed in trio with Curley Russell and Max Roach, and solo. In the third, Powell is backed by rhythm section George Duvivier and Art Taylor.
Volume 1 was initially released in March 1956; [1] Volume 2 was released the following month. [2]
After 10"s became less popular, Blue Note began reissuing its Modern Jazz Series on 12"s. The three sessions were subsequently recompiled across The Amazing Bud Powell, Volume 1 (BLP 1503) and The Amazing Bud Powell, Volume 2 (BLP 1504), the second pair of releases on Blue Note's 1500 series, their first one hundred 12" records after they discontinued their line of 10" records.
The two volumes were recompiled for their CD reissue, ordering the three sessions chronologically, placing the first session and the solo takes from the second session on Volume 1, and three trio takes and the third session on Volume 2. These remasters were also included on The Complete Blue Note and Roost Recordings , a four-disc box set.
When Rudy Van Gelder remastered the pair of the 2001 RVG edition, he placed the first two sessions on Volume 1 and the third session on Volume 2, mirroring the original 10" releases. Prior to this, on all releases bar the first, the album also contained a number of tracks from sessions originally on The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 1 .
Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
AllMusic (Vol. 1) | [3] |
AllMusic (Vol. 2) | [4] |
The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide (Vol. 1) | [5] |
The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide (Vol. 2) | [5] |
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings (Vol. 1) | [6] |
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings (Vol. 2) | [6] |
Encyclopedia of Popular Music | [7] |
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings included both albums in its suggested “core collection” of essential recordings. [6]
The albums are highly rated within Powell's musical library, described by All About Jazz as "among the pianist's most important recordings" [8] and by The Complete Idiot's Guide to Jazz as "a great introduction to this awesome pianist". [9] Jazz critic Scott Yanow characterized them in his book Jazz on Record as "full of essential music". [10]
In Bebop: The Best Musicians and Recordings, Yanow identifies among the highlights of the album "Bouncing with Bud", "52nd Street Theme" and "Dance of the Infidels," performed by the "very exciting quintet" of 1949, and also the 1951 trio's "three stunning versions of 'Un Poco Loco'". [11] In The Blackwell Guide to Recorded Jazz, Barry Kernfeld notes with regards to "Un Poco Loco" that "the three takes [of the song]...enable us to hear the evolution of a masterpiece", [12] a label with which a critic at The New York Times concurred. [13]
While the song "Un Poco Loco" has been identified as musically outstanding, it has also been discussed as culturally significant. According to Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop, although Afro-Cuban jazz had been introduced in the 1940s by such artists as Dizzy Gillespie and Machito, "Un Poco Loco" is a significant marker in the establishment of this musical genre, as it revealed "the Afro-Cuban turn settling into bebop's acceptable field of rhetorical conventions". [14] More than Afro-Cuban, the authors of that book detect what they describe as a "Pan-African" musical influence in the composition's repetition, harmony and cyclic solo that, while not as obviously Afro-international as Gillespie's "A Night in Tunisia', "certainly signaled a 'blackness' that became part of the language of subsequent expressions of modern jazz." [15] The book Jazz 101 indicates that Powell's performances of this material in 1951 was "all the more astonishing" in its "level of creativity, and even authenticity" because little was known at the time of African music or how Latin music (aside from the Cuban influence) could be applied to jazz. [16] According to Yanow, in Afro-Cuban Jazz: The Essential Listening Companion, this composition was Powell's only involvement with Afro-Cuban Jazz. [17]
All tracks are written by Bud Powell, except as noted.
No. | Title | Writer(s) | Date recorded | Length |
---|---|---|---|---|
1. | "Un Poco Loco" (alternate take #1) | May 1, 1951 | 3:46 | |
2. | "Un Poco Loco" (alternate take #2) | May 1, 1951 | 4:28 | |
3. | "Un Poco Loco" | May 1, 1951 | 4:42 | |
4. | "Dance of the Infidels" | August 8, 1949 | 2:50 | |
5. | "52nd Street Theme" | Thelonious Monk | August 8, 1949 | 2:45 |
6. | "It Could Happen to You" (alternate take) |
| May 1, 1951 | 3:12 |
No. | Title | Writer(s) | Date recorded | Length |
---|---|---|---|---|
1. | "A Night in Tunisia" (alternate take) |
| May 1, 1951 | 3:49 |
2. | "A Night in Tunisia" |
| May 1, 1951 | 4:12 |
3. | "Wail" | August 8, 1949 | 3:02 | |
4. | "Ornithology" |
| August 8, 1949 | 2:20 |
5. | "Bouncing with Bud" |
| August 8, 1949 | 3:01 |
6. | "Parisian Thoroughfare" | May 1, 1951 | 3:23 |
All tracks are written by Bud Powell, except as noted.
No. | Title | Writer(s) | Date recorded | Length |
---|---|---|---|---|
1. | "Reets and I" | Harris | August 14, 1953 | 3:18 |
2. | "Autumn in New York" | Duke | August 14, 1953 | 2:51 |
3. | "I Want to Be Happy" | Youmans, Caesar | August 14, 1953 | 2:50 |
4. | "It Could Happen to You" | Van Heusen, Burke | May 1, 1951 | 3:13 |
5. | "Sure Thing" | August 14, 1953 | 2:39 | |
6. | "Polka Dots and Moonbeams" | Van Heusen, Burke | August 14, 1953 | 4:00 |
No. | Title | Writer(s) | Date recorded | Length |
---|---|---|---|---|
1. | "Glass Enclosure" | August 14, 1953 | 2:21 | |
2. | "Collard Greens and Black-Eyed Peas" | Pettiford | August 14, 1953 | 3:01 |
3. | "Over the Rainbow" | Harold Arlen, E.Y. "Yip" Harburg | May 1, 1951 | 2:57 |
4. | "Audrey" | August 14, 1953 | 2:54 | |
5. | "You Go to My Head" | J. Fred Coots, Haven Gillespie | August 8, 1949 | 3:15 |
6. | "Ornithology" (alternate take) | Benny Harris, Charlie Parker | August 8, 1949 | 3:11 |
All tracks are written by Bud Powell, except as noted.
No. | Title | Writer(s) | Date recorded | Length |
---|---|---|---|---|
1. | "Bouncing with Bud" (alternate take #1) |
| August 8, 1949 | 3:03 |
2. | "Bouncing with Bud" (alternate take #2) |
| August 8, 1949 | 3:12 |
3. | "Bouncing with Bud" |
| August 8, 1949 | 3:01 |
4. | "Wail" (alternate take) | August 8, 1949 | 2:38 | |
5. | "Wail" | August 8, 1949 | 3:02 | |
6. | "Dance of the Infidels" (alternate take) | August 8, 1949 | 2:52 | |
7. | "Dance of the Infidels" | August 8, 1949 | 2:50 | |
8. | "52nd Street Theme" | Monk | August 8, 1949 | 2:45 |
9. | "You Go to My Head" |
| August 8, 1949 | 3:11 |
10. | "Ornithology" |
| August 8, 1949 | 2:20 |
11. | "Ornithology" (alternate take) |
| August 8, 1949 | 3:07 |
12. | "Un Poco Loco" (alternate take #1) | May 1, 1951 | 3:46 | |
13. | "Un Poco Loco" (alternate take #2) | May 1, 1951 | 4:28 | |
14. | "Un Poco Loco" | May 1, 1951 | 4:42 | |
15. | "Over the Rainbow" |
| May 1, 1951 | 2:55 |
All tracks are written by Bud Powell, except as noted.
No. | Title | Writer(s) | Date recorded | Length |
---|---|---|---|---|
1. | "A Night in Tunisia" | Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Paparelli | May 1, 1951 | 4:16 |
2. | "A Night in Tunisia" (alternate take) | Gillespie, Paparelli | May 1, 1951 | 3:52 |
3. | "It Could Happen to You" (alternate take) | Van Heusen, Burke | May 1, 1951 | 2:22 |
4. | "It Could Happen to You" | Van Heusen, Burke | May 1, 1951 | 3:16 |
5. | "Parisian Thoroughfare" | May 1, 1951 | 3:25 | |
6. | "Autumn in New York" | Duke | August 14, 1953 | 2:51 |
7. | "Reets and I" | Harris | August 14, 1953 | 3:18 |
8. | "Reets and I" (alternate take) | August 14, 1953 | 2:30 | |
9. | "Sure Thing" | August 14, 1953 | 2:39 | |
10. | "Collard Greens and Black-Eyed Peas" (alternate take) | August 14, 1953 | 2:11 | |
11. | "Collard Greens and Black-Eyed Peas" | Pettiford | August 14, 1953 | 3:01 |
12. | "Polka Dots and Moonbeams" | Van Heusen, Burke | August 14, 1953 | 4:00 |
13. | "I Want to Be Happy" | Youmans, Caesar | August 14, 1953 | 2:50 |
14. | "Audrey" | August 14, 1953 | 2:54 | |
15. | "Glass Enclosure" | August 14, 1953 | 2:21 |
All tracks are written by Bud Powell, except as noted.
No. | Title | Writer(s) | Date recorded | Length |
---|---|---|---|---|
1. | "Bouncing with Bud" |
| August 8, 1949 | 3:04 |
2. | "Wail" | August 8, 1949 | 3:06 | |
3. | "Dance of the Infidels" | August 8, 1949 | 2:54 | |
4. | "52nd Street Theme" | Monk | August 8, 1949 | 2:50 |
5. | "You Go to My Head" |
| August 8, 1949 | 3:15 |
6. | "Ornithology" |
| August 8, 1949 | 2:23 |
7. | "Bouncing with Bud" (alternate take #1) | August 8, 1949 | 3:06 | |
8. | "Bouncing with Bud" (alternate take #2) | August 8, 1949 | 3:16 | |
9. | "Wail" (alternate take) | August 8, 1949 | 2:42 | |
10. | "Dance of the Infidels" (alternate take) | August 8, 1949 | 2:51 | |
11. | "Ornithology" (alternate take) | August 8, 1949 | 3:12 | |
12. | "Un Poco Loco" | May 1, 1951 | 4:46 | |
13. | "Over the Rainbow" |
| May 1, 1951 | 2:59 |
14. | "A Night in Tunisia" |
| May 1, 1951 | 4:17 |
15. | "It Could Happen to You" |
| May 1, 1951 | 3:17 |
16. | "Parisian Thoroughfare" | May 1, 1951 | 3:26 | |
17. | "Un Poco Loco" (alternate take #1) | May 1, 1951 | 3:49 | |
18. | "Un Poco Loco" (alternate take #2) | May 1, 1951 | 4:32 | |
19. | "A Night in Tunisia" (alternate take) | May 1, 1951 | 3:53 | |
20. | "It Could Happen to You" (alternate take) | May 1, 1951 | 2:23 |
All tracks are written by Bud Powell, except as noted.
No. | Title | Writer(s) | Date recorded | Length |
---|---|---|---|---|
1. | "Autumn in New York" | Duke | August 14, 1953 | 2:54 |
2. | "Reets and I" | Harris | August 14, 1953 | 3:22 |
3. | "Sure Thing" | August 14, 1953 | 2:40 | |
4. | "Collard Greens and Black-Eyed Peas" | Pettiford | August 14, 1953 | 3:04 |
5. | "Polka Dots and Moonbeams" | Van Heusen, Burke | August 14, 1953 | 4:04 |
6. | "I Want to Be Happy" | Youmans, Caesar | August 14, 1953 | 2:53 |
7. | "Audrey" | August 14, 1953 | 2:58 | |
8. | "Glass Enclosure" | August 14, 1953 | 2:25 | |
9. | "I've Got You Under My Skin" | Cole Porter | August 14, 1953 | 2:37 |
10. | "Autumn in New York" (alternate take #1) | August 14, 1953 | 2:13 | |
11. | "Autumn in New York" (alternate take #2) | August 14, 1953 | 2:58 | |
12. | "Reets and I" (alternate take #1) | August 14, 1953 | 2:33 | |
13. | "Reets and I" (alternate take #2) | August 14, 1953 | 3:13 | |
14. | "Sure Thing" (alternate take) | August 14, 1953 | 2:45 | |
15. | "Collard Greens and Black-Eyed Peas" (alternate take) | August 14, 1953 | 2:11 |
Earl Rudolph "Bud" Powell was an American jazz pianist and composer. A pioneer in the development of bebop and its associated contributions to jazz theory, Powell's application of complex phrasing to the piano influenced both his contemporaries and later pianists including Walter Davis, Jr., Toshiko Akiyoshi, and Barry Harris.
"Un Poco Loco" is an Afro-Cuban jazz standard composed by American jazz pianist Bud Powell. It was first recorded for Blue Note Records by Powell, Curly Russell, and Max Roach on May 1, 1951.
Richard Powell was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. He was not assisted in his musical development by Bud, his older and better known brother, but both played predominantly in the bebop style.
Dillon "Curley" Russell was an American jazz musician, who played bass on many bebop recordings.
Scott Yanow is an American jazz reviewer, historian, and author.
The Amazing Bud Powell is a ten-inch LP by American jazz pianist Bud Powell, recorded on August 8, 1949, and May 1, 1951, and released on Blue Note in April 1952. In the first session, Powell performed in quintet with Fats Navarro, Sonny Rollins, Tommy Potter and Roy Haynes, and in trio with Potter and Haynes. In the second, Powell performed in trio with Curley Russell and Max Roach, and solo.
"Groovin' High" is an influential 1945 song by jazz composer and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. The song was a bebop mainstay that became a jazz standard, one of Gillespie's best known hits, and according to Bebop: The Music and Its Players author Thomas Owens, "the first famous bebop recording". The song is a complex musical arrangement based on the chord structure of the 1920 standard originally recorded by Paul Whiteman, "Whispering", with lyrics by John Schonberger and Richard Coburn (né Frank Reginald DeLong; 1886–1952) and music by Vincent Rose. The biography Dizzy characterizes the song as "a pleasant medium-tempo tune" that "demonstrates...[Gillespie's] skill in fashioning interesting textures using only six instruments".
The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 2 is a ten-inch LP by American jazz pianist Bud Powell recorded at WOR Studios in New York on August 14, 1953 and released on Blue Note the following year. Powell is backed by rhythm section George Duvivier and Art Taylor.
Time Waits, also known as The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 4, is a studio album by American jazz pianist Bud Powell recorded at Van Gelder Studio on May 24, 1958 with rhythm section Sam Jones and Philly Joe Jones and released on Blue Note later that year.
The Complete Blue Note and Roost Recordings is a four-disc box set by American jazz pianist Bud Powell compiling his recordings as leader for Blue Note, and two early sessions for Roost, released by Blue Note on October 4, 1994.
Blue Serge is an album by jazz baritone saxophonist Serge Chaloff, and released by Capitol Records in 1956. It was recorded on March 14 and 16, 1956 at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles, California.
Un Poco Loco is an album by American jazz vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, recorded in 1979 and released on the Columbia label. The album was Hutcherson's last for Columbia.
Triple Threat is the fourth album by saxophonist Jimmy Heath featuring performances recorded in 1962 originally released on the Riverside label.
Bouncing with Bud is a 1946 jazz standard by American pianist Bud Powell and Gil Fuller, which features the saxophone of Sonny Stitt and the trumpet of Kenny Dorham. It was originally recorded on 23 August 1946 as "Bebop in Pastel".
"Glass Enclosure" is a composition by jazz pianist Bud Powell. The first recording was Powell's version for Blue Note Records in 1953, which was released as part of the album The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 2 the following year. It was also released as one side of a single, with "I Want to Be Happy".
Swinging Sounds is a jazz album by drummer Shelly Manne's group Shelly Manne & His Men, recorded in 1956 and released on the Contemporary label. Early releases of the album were labelled Vol 4, indicating it was the fourth volume of recordings released by the group.
Remembering Bud Powell is an album by pianist Chick Corea and Friends performing tunes by Bud Powell. It was released on Corea's Stretch label in 1997.
623 C Street is the second album led by saxophonist Ralph Moore which was recorded in 1987 and released on the Dutch Criss Cross Jazz label.
"Una Noche con Francis", originally titled "Un Noche con Francis", is a calypso jazz composition written by Bud Powell in 1964 and dedicated to jazz fan and amateur musician Francis Paudras.
"Bud on Bach" is a composition written by jazz pianist Bud Powell for his 1957 album Bud!, also known as The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 3. It is unusual among jazz compositions for being based upon Solfeggietto, a composition by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.