All That Jazz #8 - Elvin Jones

It's impossible to overstate the importance of Elvin Jones. The fact that he was behind the drums for the incendiary series of LPs put out by John Coltrane on Atlantic and Impulse between 1960 and 1966, guarantees his immortality in jazz circles, even though this merely scratches the surface of his phenomenal body of work. In a career stretching from 1948 until his death in 2004, Jones played for virtually every jazz musician of any significance, while also finding time to release close to 50 albums under his own name. The run of ten LPs he put out on the legendary Blue Note label between 1968 and 1973 are particularly noteworthy. The name on the sleeves was his, but the rotating ensembles he led were crammed with quality players. Here he is fronting an unusual keyboardless three horn line-up of Joe Farrell, Dave Liebman and Frank Foster plus Gene Perla on bass with 'Three Card Molly' from 1971's 'Genesis'.

Elvin Jones - Three Card Molly

All That Jazz #7 - Sonny Red

Large swaths Blue Note's legendary back catalogue were re-issued as part of a deal with EMI in the mid-1980s. The label's roster seemed an endless parade of wonderfulness to me. Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, McCoy Tyner, Wayne Shorter, Lee Morgan, Jimmy Smith, the list went on and on and, working in a record shop, I was in the fortunate position of having access to many of the gems on offer.

A lesser known LP that I discovered sandwiched among the jazz giants in the reissue programme, was 'Out of the Blue' by saxophonist Sonny Red. Originally issued in 1960, it features Miles Davis alumni Wynton Kelly, Jimmy Cobb and Paul Chambers among the backing musicians. Biographical details are scarce, but later in the 1960s Sonny played extensively as a sideman for trumpeter Donald Byrd and eventually drifted into obscurity after releasing a final, self-titled, LP in 1971.

Sonny Red passed away 37 years ago at the age of 48, leaving 'Out of the Blue' as his only Blue Note LP as a band leader. Here's the very cool 'Bluesville'.

Sonny Red - Bluesville

All That Jazz #1 - Herbie Hancock

For a long time, a very long time, I've wanted to introduce a Jazz series to these pages. I'm keenly aware that this might prove less than popular in some quarters and I can respect that, but it's a musical genre that takes up a great deal of my listening hours, so please forgive an old man's indulgence. Fear not though, the series, much like its Reggae counterpart Red Gold & Green, will be an occasional one. The title, All That Jazz, is a nod to my Dad (himself a Jazz fan in the 1950's) who would often, apropos of nothing, conclude a sentence with the phrase '...and all that jazz'.

I'll kick things off with the nearest thing to a safe bet that I have at my disposal, 'Cantaloupe Island' by Herbie Hancock. The tune was recorded in 1964 for Hancock's fourth Blue Note LP 'Empyrean Isles', on which he is joined by three musicians who will definitely reappear in this series down the line somewhere - Freddie Hubbard on cornet, Ron Carter on bass and the great Tony Williams on drums. The tune achieved renewed recognition when it was heavily sampled to form the basis of 'Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)', a hit single for Us3 in 1993.

Herbie Hancock - Cantaloupe Island

(Buy 'Empyrean Isles' by Herbie Hancock here)