Booker Little – The Confined Few
Booker Little – Blues De Tambour
Booker Little – Witch Fire
While there are many jazz players whose artistry I admire, there are few that compare to Booker Little. Over the course of less than four years, Booker Little worked with some of the best in modern jazz, including Max Roach, John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy. He more than held his own amongst giants, with his composition style and soloing progressively growing over time in complexity and beauty. His career was tragically cut short at the age of 23 in 1961 due to kidney failure and uremia. Though he recorded for such a short time, he did leave more than a few exceptional recordings, including the music contained on this album.
This session was recorded live, though there’s very little indication of that on this record, at the Museum of Modern art in NYC in the summer of 1960, about a year before Booker’s death. While it’s likely that his body was already feeling the effects of his illness, his playing shines through here as it does on the material he recorded in 1961 (I’ll save that for later posts). As if the lovely work of Booker on trumpet wasn’t enough, this set also features one of my all-time favorite saxophone players, Booker Ervin, probably best known for his work with Charles Mingus in addition to his signature soloing style. “The Confined Few” features the talents of these most favored Bookers, and is one of my favorite post-bop tracks of all time. The group all together is pretty fantastic, featuring Mal Waldron on piano, Teddy Charles on vibes, Ed Shaughnessy on drums and Addison Farmer on bass. The other two tracks here “Blues De Tambour” and “Witch Fire” (all of these come from side two of the record) primarily feature Booker’s trumpet, though Mal Waldron does solid work here as does Shaughnessy, holding it down rhythmically by himself on “Blues” and along with Willie Rodriguez on the exceptional “Witch Fire.”
The wonderful discography of Booker’s music put together by Alan Saul mentions that this was originally released on Warwick records as Jazz In The Garden and has been re-issued on CD as Booker Little & Teddy Charles Live – The Complete Concert. I haven’t heard the reissue, but if it restores the full performances (Saul mentions that some of the originally performed solos were edited out on this TCB release), you might want to track that down instead/in addition to this record.
Some day soon, I really do hope there is a full account of the music and life of Booker Little, it certainly would be my dream project…
Cheers,
Michael