Len- Boy. I haven't listened to June Tabor in years. You've pulled my coat.
I ordered the RVG Blue Note remaster of Free For All (Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers for you babes in the woods who don't know). I've whined elsewhere about my dissatisfaction with the RVG remaster of Andrew Hill's Point Of Departure. But the former was released in 2002 and the latter in 1999, so I thought I would place the bet. The work that was undertaken on this is obvious to me having heard the Lp so many times. And some very fine work it is. Blakey, in particular, his drum work, is much finer in terms of detail and overtones. You can hear his vocal support like never before. Space is palpable now with better separation of instruments in the mix except that (a fiery) Hubbard and Fuller are brought up so far they are on the face of my left speaker. Bass is heard (and felt) to better effect underpinning all that's going on. And that brings us to Wayne Shorter. I think his misfortune is that he is in the same channel as Blakey. I think the design was to put more light on Blakey and so Shorter's forward presence is compromised as compared to the Lp. I could get pissed about this except that on balance, this is a such a good sounding disc and so satisfying otherwise.
On Amazon, Free For All is refered to in the many 5 star reviews as seminal hard bop. Somebody somewhere refered to it as post bop. I like what somebody called it. The compositions are more interesting that straight 4/4 time. But seminal . . oh yeah, they got that right! Smokin Lucky's or those funny lookin wheatstraw cigarettes, this is a jazz masterpiece from the day. Ten stars. Best experienced at advanced volume.
