Introducing Kenny Burrell: The First Blue Note Sessions

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The Detroit-born Kenny Burrell reigns as the dean of jazz guitarists. He’s combined Charlie Christian‘s prebop fluency, Django Reinhardt‘s Old World touches, and the rhythmic drive of Nat King Cole‘s guitarist, Oscar Moore. This two-CD set contains Burrell’s earliest Blue Note sessions from 1956. The first seven tracks, with drummer Kenny Clarke, bassist Paul Chambers, pianist Tommy Flanagan, and percussionist Candido Camero were released as Introducing Kenny Burrell.

It’s a pleasing and swinging potpourri of Latin-tinged numbers and ballads such as “Weaver of Dreams,” “This Time the Dream’s on Me,” and “Takeela” (read: Tequila). Burrell’s nifty “Fugue ‘n the Blues” is a Bach-meets-bop excursion worthy of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Tracks 8 and 9 are from Kenny Burrell Volume Two, and feature the guitarist’s lightning-licked take on “Get Happy” and a succulent solo rendition of George Gershwin‘s “But Not for Me.”

Those sessions continue on Disc 2 with Shadow Wilson and Oscar Pettiford taking over the drum and the bass with Frank Foster on tenor saxophone, and they remake classics such as Count Basie‘s “Moten Swing.” Another date, Swingin’, with Hank Mobley, Horace Silver, Doug Watkins, and Louis Hayes, finds Burrell and company in superb form on Lester Young‘s “D.B. Blues” and Silver’s “Nica’s Dream.” On all of those sides, Burrell’s blues-based guitar sounds as modern today as it did in the ’50s. –Eugene Holley Jr.