Jackie McLean - Tippin’ the Scales (1980 Japanese Blue Note Vinyl LP)

Jackie McLean - Tippin’ the Scales | Vinyl LP - 1980 Japanese Blue Note Reissue (GXK 8160, Unissued Masters Series Part 1)

• Recorded September 28, 1962 and left in the Blue Note vault for seventeen years, a quartet session with Sonny Clark on piano, Butch Warren on bass and Art Taylor on drums, produced by Alfred Lion and unearthed by Michael Cuscuna.
• Sonny Clark wrote three of the six pieces, contributing “Nursery Blues”, “Nicely” and “Two for One” alongside McLean’s own “Tippin’ the Scales” and “Rainy Blues” and a reading of Vernon Duke’s “Cabin in the Sky”. Clark died less than four months later.
• 1980 Japanese pressing in the Blue Note Unissued Masters Series. Manufactured by King Record Co. Ltd. Remixed by Tony Sestanovich from the original Van Gelder recordings.

By September 1962, Jackie McLean was between two versions of himself. Six months earlier he had recorded Let Freedom Ring, the album that pushed his playing into harder, more angular territory and signalled where he was heading. Six months later he would cut One Step Beyond with Grachan Moncur III and Bobby Hutcherson, going further still. This session, squeezed in between those two landmarks, goes the other way. It’s a straight quartet date, no horns to share the front line with, no avant-garde intentions. McLean with Sonny Clark, Butch Warren and Art Taylor, playing standards and originals in a relaxed, swinging setting. Alfred Lion recorded it at Van Gelder’s Englewood Cliffs studio and then, for reasons that remain unclear, shelved it. It sat in the vault while McLean’s public discography leapt from Let Freedom Ring to One Step Beyond as if nothing had happened in between.

Michael Cuscuna found it and produced it for release in 1979, seventeen years after it was recorded. The music holds up. Clark’s three compositions are the highlights: “Nursery Blues” has a winding, blues-inflected melody, “Nicely” is warmer and more lyrical, “Two for One” swings hard. McLean’s own “Tippin’ the Scales” opens the album with Art Taylor’s counter-patterns setting the tone. “Cabin in the Sky” closes Side B with the quartet at its most tender. Clark’s playing throughout is the work of a pianist at full command: comping with precision, soloing with that combination of earthiness and humour that made him one of the most distinctive pianists on the Blue Note roster. He died on January 13, 1963. This session, recorded three and a half months before that, is one of the last things he put on tape. This copy is the 1980 Japanese pressing in the Blue Note Unissued Masters Series, manufactured by King Record Co. Ltd.