Collection: The Super Jazz Trio

The Super Jazz Trio existed for the same reason the Great Jazz Trio existed: a Japanese label wanted to document an American pianist's working group in a focused, unhurried way that the American market rarely made space for. Baystate Records, the Tokyo-based label that also produced Marion Brown's "Passion Flower" and a run of other late-1970s acoustic jazz sessions, brought Tommy Flanagan, bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Joe Chambers into Sound Ideas Studios in New York in November 1978 and recorded the self-titled debut. The group's name was given by the label, not by the musicians themselves, following the same pattern as East Wind had used with the Great Jazz Trio two years earlier. Flanagan was then at a turning point: he had spent most of the 1960s and 1970s as Ella Fitzgerald's musical director, a role that kept him off records as a leader for long stretches, and was beginning the sustained solo career that would produce his finest work through the 1980s. The Super Jazz Trio sessions document him in the transitional moment: the same year as his Enja debut "Eclypso," the same Sound Ideas Studios that the Dave Liebman "Lookout Farm" session used, and with a rhythm section of genuine depth. Reggie Workman had been Coltrane's bassist on "Africa/Brass" and "Ole Coltrane"; Joe Chambers was the drummer on Andrew Hill's Blue Note records. A second session added Japanese saxophonist Hidefumi Toki; a Tokyo session paired the trio with flugelhorn player Art Farmer. The group recorded a follow-up, "The Standard," in 1980 at The Power Station in New York, then disbanded.