The Amazing Bud Powell

Infobox Album
Name = The Amazing Bud Powell
Type = studio
Artist = Bud Powell


Released = 1951
Recorded = Aug 9, 1949-May 1, 1951
Genre = Jazz
Length =
Label = Blue Note Records
Producer = Alfred Lion
Reviews = *Allmusic Rating|5|5 [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:wxfuxqrgldde link]
Last album = "The Genius of Bud Powell"
(1951)
This album = "The Amazing Bud Powell"
(1951)
Next album = "Bud Powell's Moods"
(1951)

"The Amazing Bud Powell", also called "The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 1", is a 1951 album by jazz pianist Bud Powell. It is part of a loosely connected series with the 1953 companion "The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 2" and the 1957 "The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 3: Bud!", all released on Blue Note Records. The album details two recording sessions. In the first, recorded on August 9 1949, Powell performed in quintet with Fats Navarro, Sonny Rollins, Tommy Potter and Roy Haynes. In the second, on May 1 1951, Powell performed in trio with Curley Russell and Max Roach.

The album is critically prized among Powell's releases. Among the more discussed of the album's tracks is the pianist's composition "Un Poco Loco" ("A Little Crazy"), which has been singled out by critics and cultural historians for both musical and cultural significance.

The album was remastered and re-issued on CD in 1989 in chronological order with additional, alternative takes and re-issued again in 2001 with further expansion. The full set is also available along with additional tracks on "The Complete Blue Note and Roost Recordings", a 4 disc box set. [allmusic|id=10:39fuxq9hld0e|label=The Complete Blue Note and Roost Recordings]

Critical reception

The album is rated highly within Powell's musical library, described by "All About Jazz" as "among the pianist's most important recordings" [Firehammer, John. (October 1 2001) [http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=8786 The Amazing Bud Powell Vols. 1 and 2] "All About Jazz". Retrieved on 2008-05-26.] and by "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Jazz" (in conjunction with volume two) as "a great introduction to this awesome pianist". [cite book | last = Axelrod | first = Alan | coauthors=Alpha Development Group | title = The Complete Idiot's Guide to Jazz | publisher = Alpha Books | date = 1999 | pages = 167 | isbn = 0028627318] Jazz critic Scott Yanow characterized it in his book "Jazz on Record" as "full of essential music". [cite book | last = Yanow | first = Scott | title = Jazz on Record: The First Sixty Years | publisher = Backbeat Books | date = 2003 | pages = 359 | isbn = 0879307552]

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'". [cite book | last = Yanow | first = Scott | title = Bebop: The Best Musicians and Recordings | publisher = Backbeat Books | date = 2000 | pages = 62-63 | isbn = 0879306084] Barry Kernfeld in "The Blackwell Guide to Recorded Jazz" notes with regards to "Un Poco Loco" that "the three takes [of the song] ...enable us to hear the evolution of a masterpiece", [cite book | last = Kernfeld | first = Barry Dean | title = The Blackwell Guide to Recorded Jazz | publisher = Blackwell Publishing | date = 1995 | pages = 232 | isbn = 0631195521] a label with which "The New York Times" concurred. [Citation | last = Piazza | first = Tom | coauthors = | title = How two pianists remade (and upheld) a tradition | newspaper = New York Times | pages = | year = 1995 | date = January 1 1995 | url = http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE6DA1038F932A35752C0A963958260]

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". [cite book | last = Ramsey, Jr. | first = Guthrie P. |coauthors=Guthrie P. Ramsey | title = Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop | publisher = University of California Press | date = 2004 | pages = 127 | isbn = 0520243331] 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." [Ramsey and Ramsey, 128-130.] 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. [cite book | last = Szwed | first = John F. | title = Jazz 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving Jazz | publisher = Hyperion | date = 2000 | pages = 170 | isbn = 0786884967] According to Yanow, in "Afro-Cuban Jazz: The Essential Listening Companion", this composition was Powell's only involvement with Afro-Cuban Jazz. [cite book | last =Yanow | first =Scott | title =Afro-Cuban Jazz: The Essential Listening Companion | publisher =Backbeat Books | date =2000 | pages = 188 | isbn = 087930619X]

Track listing

"Except where otherwise noted, all songs composed by Bud Powell."

1989 Re-issue

#"Bouncing with Bud" (Alternate Take #1)" (Gil Fuller, Powell) – 3:06
#"Bouncing with Bud" (Alternate Take #2)" (Fuller, Powell) – 3:14
#"Bouncing with Bud" (Fuller, Powell) – 3:03
#"Wail" (Alternate Take) – 2:43
#"Wail" – 2:43
#"Dance of the Infidels" (alternate take) – 2:51
#"Dance of the Infidels" – 2:54
#"52nd Street Theme" (Thelonius Monk) – 2:50
#"You go to My Head" (J. Fred Coots, Haven Gillespie) – 3:15
#"Ornithology" (Benny Harris, Charlie Parker) – 2:23
#"Ornithology" (alternate take) (Harris, Parker) – 3:10
#"Un Poco Loco" (alternate take) – 3:50
#"Un Poco Loco" (alternate take) – 4:31
#"Un Poco Loco" – 4:45
#"Over the Rainbow" (Harold Arlen, E.Y. "Yip" Harburg) – 2:57

2001 expanded

#"Bouncing with Bud" (Fuller, Powell) – 3:04
#"Wail" – 3:06
#"Dance of the Infidels" – 2:53
#"52nd Street Theme" (Monk) – 2:49
#"You Go to My Head" (Coots, Gillespie) – 3:15
#"Ornithology" (Harris, Parker) – 2:23
#"Bouncing with Bud" (alternate take #1) (Fuller, Powell) – 3:06
#"Bouncing with Bud" (alternate take #2) (Fuller, Powell) – 3:15
#"Wail" (alternate take) – 2:41
#"Dance of the Infidels" (alternate take) – 2:50
#"Ornithology" (alternate take) (Harris, Parker) – 3:12
#"Un Poco Loco" – 4:46
#"Over the Rainbow" (Arlen, Harburg) – 2:58
#"A Night in Tunisia" (Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Paparelli) – 4:16
#"It Could Happen to You" (Johnny Burke, James Van Heusen) – 3:16
#"Parisian Thoroughfare" – 3:25
#"Un Poco Loco" (alternate take #1) – 3:49
#"Un Poco Loco" (alternate take #2) – 4:32
#"A Night in Tunisia" (alternate take) (Gillespie, Paparelli) – 3:52
#"It Could Happen to You" (alternate take) (Burke, VanHeusen) – 2:22

Personnel

Performance

*George Duvivier – bass
*Roy Haynes – drums
*Fats Navarro – trumpet
*Tommy Potter – bass
*Bud Powell – piano
*Max Roach – drums
*Sonny Rollins – sax (tenor)
*Curly Russell – bass
*Art Taylor – drums

Production

*Michael Cuscuna – producer
*Leonard Feather – liner notes
*Doug Hawkins – engineer
*John Hermansader – cover design
*Alfred Lion – producer, original session producer
*Ron McMaster – digital transfers
*Rudy Van Gelder – disc transfers
*Francis Wolff – photography, cover photo

References

External links

* [http://mustv.com/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4184671 NPR Basic Jazz Record Library entry] , with audio samples.