What's better than a Bill Evans Trio album? How about a Bill Evans trio album on which the bassist is Percy Heath, the drummer is Connie Kay, and the leader is not Evans but alto sax god Cannonball Adderley, making the group actually a quartet? It's a different sort of ensemble, to be sure, and the musical results are marvelous. Adderley's playing on "Waltz for Debby" is both muscular and sensitive, as it is on the other Evans composition here, a modal ballad called "Know What I Mean?" Other treats include the sprightly "Toy" and two takes of the Gershwin classic "Who Cares?" The focus here is, of course, on Adderley's excellent post-bop stylings, but it's also interesting to hear Evans playing with a rhythm section as staid and conservative as Kay and Heath (both charter members of the Modern Jazz Quartet). It's hard to imagine any fan of mainstream jazz not finding much to love on this very fine recording.

With his thick, engaging sound and elegant romanticism, it only made sense for Ike Quebec to try his hand at the bossa nova boom Stan Getz kick-started in 1962, and that's what he did with Soul Samba. However, Quebec makes the session much more than mere bandwagon-jumping. He takes some chances with the repertoire and consciously adds a heavy blues inflection that makes Soul Samba one of the more unique interpretations of the bossa nova style. It's also one of the more sensuous, thanks in part to the combination of Quebec's natural tendencies and the soft, light style itself, but even more so with the extra bit of meat added via the blues. The music is warm and danceable, yet with a late-evening hush that's more suggestive of winding down and getting cozy with someone…

Following a series of concert dates in Tokyo late in 1961 with his quintet, Horace Silver returned to the U.S. with his head full of the Japanese melodies he had heard during his visit, and using those as a springboard, he wrote four new pieces, which he then recorded at sessions held on July 13 and 14, 1962, along with a version of Ronnell Bright's little known ballad "Cherry Blossom." One would naturally assume the resulting LP would have a Japanese feel, but that really isn't the case. Using Latin rhythms and the blues as a base, Silver's Tokyo-influenced compositions fit right in with the subtle cross-cultural but very American hard bop he'd been doing all along. Using his usual quintet (Blue Mitchell on trumpet, Junior Cook on tenor sax, Gene Taylor on bass) with drummer Joe Harris (he is listed as John Harris, Jr. for this set) filling in for an ailing Roy Brooks), Silver's compositions have a light, airy feel, with plenty of space…

A great chapter in 60s bossa jazz - Zoot Sims "answer" to Stan Getz's bossa work on Verve - recorded in a similar jazz-meets-bossa style, with some great guitar work by Jim Hall! Zoot's solos are a bit tighter and not as laidback as Stan's - giving a more jazz-based sound to the work that makes for a nice change - and most of the tunes feature larger backings from Manny Albam and Al Cohn - never too over-arranged, but with enough of a full swinging sound to set things right. Hall's guitar works surprisingly well in the setting.

The Original Mono Recordings collects Dylan's first 8 albums as he originally created them - in mono. One speaker. One voice. One powerhouse of a sound.
Like any recording artist of the ‘60s, Bob Dylan had his albums mixed for mono during the bulk of the decade. Stereo mixes were simultaneously released, but they didn’t take precedence until the end of the ‘60s, when the industry and public tastes shifted toward two speakers. As the decades rolled on, those original mono mixes never again surfaced, but the unexpected success of 2009’s The Beatles in Mono Box opened the doors for 2010’s The Original Mono Recordings, a handsome nine-disc box containing Dylan’s first eight albums in remastered mono and housed in attractive, stiff, mini-LP cardboard sleeves…

In 1963 Cannonball Adderley signed with the Capitol label, retaining the rights to some master tapes recorded earlier while he was with Riverside. This CD (a straight reissue of an earlier LP) therefore contains music much closer to the altoist's freewheeling Riverside period than to his R&Bish Capitol dates. Adderley's greatest band - his sextet with cornetist Nat Adderley, Yusef Lateef (on tenor, flute and oboe), pianist Joe Zawinul, bassist Sam Jones, and drummer Louis Hayes - is featured on such exciting numbers as "Jessica's Day," Jones' "Unit 7," and "The Jive Samba." A special treat of this live date is hearing the leader's introductory words to several of the songs.

Tenor saxophonists Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt co-led a small group in 1950, and this follow-up, taped in the studio in 1961, finds the two picking up where they left off. The highlight of the date is the jointly written "Blues up and Down," a classic jam which has since inspired a number of other tenor match ups to record it, especially Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Johnny Griffin. Ammons' repetitious one-note melody within "The One Before This," like Duke Ellington's deceptively simple two-note theme "C Jam Blues," leads to some inspired improvising by both men. Stitt switches to alto sax for a loping take of "There Is No Greater Love," during which Ammons' tenor provides the perfect foil. The rhythm section includes bassist Buster Williams, along with the somewhat obscure pianist John Houston and drummer George Brown.

Moon Beams was the first recording Bill Evans made after the death of his musical right arm, bassist Scott LaFaro. Indeed, in LaFaro, Evans found a counterpart rather than a sideman, and the music they made together over four albums showed it. Bassist Chuck Israels from Cecil Taylor and Bud Powell's bands took his place in the band with Evans and drummer Paul Motian and Evans recorded the only possible response to the loss of LaFaro - an album of ballads. The irony on this recording is that, despite material that was so natural for Evans to play, particularly with his trademark impressionistic sound collage style, is that other than as a sideman almost ten years before, he has never been more assertive than on Moon Beams…

Playing piano-style single-note lines on his Hammond B-3 organ, Jimmy Smith revolutionized the use of the instrument in a jazz combo setting in the mid-'50s and early '60s, and this piano approach makes him a natural to adapt the piano tunes associated with Fats Waller to the B-3, which is what he did at the January 23, 1962, session that is represented here (Waller, by the way, was no stranger to the organ himself, and recorded several sides on the instrument). Working with guitarist Quentin Warren and his longtime drummer Donald Bailey (who worked with Smith throughout his Blue Note years), Smith brings his amazing rapid runs to Waller standards "Ain't Misbehavin'" and "Honeysuckle Rose," and gives "Ain't She Sweet" a wonderfully warm and soulful groove. It's fairly typical Smith, who careens, bolts, stutters, glides, and flashes notes all over the place at a frequently breathless pace, doing what he always does, which is being Jimmy Smith at the organ. That's what you want, and that's what you get here.

Violinist Svend Asmussen (who has had too few of his albums through the decades available in the U.S.) teams up with pianist John Lewis, bassist Jimmy Woode and drummer Sture Kalin on this 1962 session from Stockholm, Sweden. Most notable is the repertoire: six Lewis originals (including "Django") and Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman." Asmussen fits in well with Lewis and brings a solid sense of swing to the somewhat complex music.

Suddenly The Blues reveals that Leo Wright possessed equal doses of talent on both alto sax and flute, both of which assumed a fluid and assertive tone that commands the attention of the listener. In fact, he worked in a soulful sensibility and decectively complex technique not unlike Lou Donaldson’s, most notably on 'Sassy Lady'. His flute work on 'The Wiggler' is reminiscent of the “coolness” and quirkiness of Quincy Jones’ theme 'Soul Bossa Nova', most recently re-discovered on the soundtrack of Austin Powers 'The Spy Who Shagged Me'. This LP is interesting as well because it captures Ron Carter’s work just after he left Bobby Timmons’ group and before he joined Miles Davis’ most famous quintet, for which he’ll forever be known…

This strange (and strangely compelling) album is the most controversial of all O'Day's Verve Records releases, popular among O'Day's hardcore fans for the showcase that the Three Sounds' near-minimalist accompaniment affords her singing. On a lot of levels, however, it wasn't a successful record. The album was a one-shot collaboration that happened in the narrowest possible window-of-opportunity. The Three Sounds, having left Blue Note, were passing through the Verve roster, where they would be active for about a week in October of 1962, cutting two albums in that time including this one with Anita O'Day, who was leaving the label after 10 years there. Anita O'Day & The Three Sounds is as much a Three Sounds record as it is an Anita O'Day recording - the group is represented by four instrumentals, including "Someday My Prince Will Come," "My Heart Stood Still," and "Blues By Five"…

A really landmark album in European jazz - one of those records that always tops the lists of collectors, and for good reason too! The sextet of trumpeter Oscar Valdambrini and tenorist Gianni Basso was easily one of the greatest things going in jazz on that side of the Atlantic in the early 60s - a fresh, modern group who could still play with plenty of soul - avoiding some of the cool jazz traps of other European combos, and really hitting hard with solo work that matched the best American work of the time. The sound here is really incredible - tunes that bristle with electricity from the very first note, played with a cohesiveness that makes the record far more than just a happy accident in the studio! Titles include the originals "Coltrane Style" and "Monotonia", plus versions of Jackie McLean's "Dr Jackle", Junior Mance's "Jubilation", and Benny Golson's "Are You Real".

In 1961 Ella Fitzgerald recorded two albums with Nelson Riddle's Orchestra. Her voice was in peak form and, even if the backup band was somewhat anonymous, Fitzgerald uplifted the 15 songs on this set; "All of Me" was from a different obscure sampler and "Call Me Darling" was previously unissued. Although the accent is on ballads, several of the songs are taken at medium tempos and she swings throughout. Highlights include "Georgia on My Mind," "The Very Thought of You," "It's a Pity to Say Goodnight," "Darn That Dream," "Body and Soul" and a cooking "All of Me."