Ray Bryant - Lonesome Traveler (1976 Japanese Chess Vinyl LP)

Vinyl: EX
Sleeve: VG+
Obi: None

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Ray Bryant - Lonesome Traveler | Vinyl LP - 1976 Japanese Chess Reissue (BT-5091, Nippon Phonogram / JVC)

Bryant was a Philadelphia pianist who had spent three years as house musician at the Blue Note Club, accompanying Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Lester Young and everyone else who came through town. By 1966 he had sideman credits with Art Blakey, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Rollins and Carmen McRae, and a solo career on Cadet (the Chess subsidiary) that leaned into the soul-jazz side of his playing. Lonesome Traveler is the second of three travel-themed albums he made for the label (after Gotta Travel On, before Slow Freight) and the grittiest of the three. The opening title track moves. Lee Hays's folk tune is turned into a hard-swinging groove with Richard Davis's bass driving underneath. "'Round Midnight" stays close to Monk's melody but Bryant's voicings pull it into a bluesier place. Then comes "These Boots Were Made For Walkin'," which is, improbably, one of the best tracks on the album. Freddie Waits lays down a backbeat, Davis plays a rising bass figure that locks the rhythm in, and Bryant rips through Lee Hazlewood's pop song like it was written for a jazz quintet. It shouldn't work, but it does. 

Side B opens with "The Blue Scimitar," an Esmond Edwards composition, before Bryant's own "Gettin' Loose" stretches into a piano workout built on his left hand, which was always his most distinctive feature: heavy, rhythmic, drawing on the boogie-woogie tradition in a way that grounded even his most harmonically sophisticated playing. "Wild Is The Wind" gets a ballad reading. "Cubano Chant," Bryant's most enduring original, first appeared on Art Blakey's Drum Suite in 1957, and this version keeps the Latin pulse while giving the flugelhorns their most prominent moment on the album. Clark Terry and Snooky Young play harmony parts throughout the record, thickening the sound without stepping into solo territory. "Brother This 'N' Sister That" closes with a funky, churchy groove.

This is the 1976 Japanese stereo reissue on Chess BT-5091, from the Chess Black Sounds Collection, manufactured by Nippon Phonogram Co., Ltd.