Art Farmer & Benny Golson - Meet The Jazztet (1975 Japanese Cadet Stereo Vinyl LP)

Art Farmer & Benny Golson - Meet the Jazztet | Vinyl LP - 1975 Japanese Cadet Stereo Reissue (MJ-1001, Cadet Jazz 20 series)

Meet the Jazztet introduces one of the best small groups of the hard bop era, and it did so with a set of tunes that would outlast almost everything around them. Trumpeter Art Farmer and tenor saxophonist Benny Golson had put the sextet together in 1959, and for this 1960 debut they filled the front line out with Curtis Fuller's trombone and handed the piano chair to a twenty-one-year-old McCoy Tyner, months before he joined John Coltrane. Golson was the writer, and this is where several of his standards were first committed to tape. "Killer Joe", which he introduces with a spoken word, would become his most famous tune. "I Remember Clifford", his elegy for the trumpeter Clifford Brown, is given a reading of real tenderness. "Blues March" struts, "Park Avenue Petite" glows, and the standards, "Serenata" and "Easy Living", are arranged with the care that set the Jazztet apart from a straight blowing band. Art Farmer's warm, considered trumpet and Golson's big tenor are the voices, but the writing is the star.

The Jazztet never became famous the way the Jazz Messengers did, and it lasted only until 1962 in its first run, but it left a body of beautifully written hard bop and launched several careers. McCoy Tyner went straight from here into the most important saxophone quartet of the decade. Golson would later step back from playing for years to write for film and television before returning to the horn. What holds up is the material, and this is the record where you hear it fresh.

This copy is the 1975 Japanese stereo reissue on Cadet, part of the Cadet Jazz 20 series, catalogue number MJ-1001, carrying Ralph J. Gleason's original liner notes.