Album cover - part of the LT series, which all have the same frame -- a wide band of plain white on all sides, with an abstract photo in the middle, a light grey to black gradient bar on the left, and another along the top, with a rainbow-colored triangle in the top left -- blue, yellow, red -- with the "blue b" Blue Note logo laid over it. In this case, the photo is a lime green building, taken at a 45 degree angle, with what appear to be windows in the corner. Photo by Jennifer Griffiths; design by Bill Burks.

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio Jackie McLean, Vertigo, Blue Note, 1981. Recorded 1963; a Classic release of vault material by Michael Cuscina. McLean, as; Donald Byrd, t; Walter Davis or Herbie Hancock, p; Paul Chambers or Butch Warren, b; Pete LaRoca or Tony Williams (first ever appearance), d.

Album cover - solid yellow, with a cartoon by Maurice Childs of a painter in a cap and carrying a pail of paint, with an ambling trail of footprints from the upper right to the lower left and around to the right again, with the name of the record in painted black letters.

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio Herbie Harper Quintet, s/t, V.S.O.P., 1985 [originally released in 1956 on Tampa Records, despite the name, a Los Angeles label] Harper, trombone; Bob Enevoldsen, tenor, valve trombone; Don Overberg, guitar; Red Mitchell, bass; Frank Capp, drums.

Album cover - an action shot of a white man (Sullivan) playing trumpet on stage. He is wearing a yellow suit (though it might be white but looks yellow in the stage light. Part of a drum kit can be seen on the bottom right. Show posters including one for an Ira Sullivan show can be seen behind him. A piano is visible on the left.

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio Ira Sullivan, Blue Stroll, Delmark, 1988. Sullivan, alto, baritone, peck horn, trumpet; Johnny Griffin, alto, baritone, tenor; Jodie Christian, piano; Vic Sproles, bass; Wilbur Campbell, drums. Recorded July 26, 1959.

Album cover - Cream cover, with an abstract geometric artwork along the bottom, overlapping quadrilaterals in orange, yellow, and white on a black background. The title is in orange near the top, under the word STEREO and the Prestige "trident" logo in yellow. The main artists are in black. Gatefold cover is heavy laminated cardboard. The cover lists Taylor last, but he is the only one named on the labels.

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio Art Taylor, Hard Cookin', Prestige, 1965 (this is the 1972 misprint issue). Compilation of two Art Taylor LPs, Taylor's Wailers (1957) and Taylor's Tenors (1959). A ton of top players: Coltrane, Byrd, Rouse, Bryant, Garland, McLean, Foster.... Cheap way to get 2 top bop LPs.

Album cover - a profile shot of a Black man (Lou D.) in front of a neon sign which I'm pretty sure says "PIZZA" in green and "BURGERS" in red. Lou is wearing a felt trilby hat with gold stitching on the band, and a brown coat.

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio Lou Donaldson, Sassy Soul Strut, Blue Note, 1973. Donaldson, alto; Horace Ott, piano; Paul Griffin, piano, organ; David Spinozza, guitar; John Tropea, guitar. Bass and drums unidentified, for shame! There's a harmonica on here, too.

Album cover - photo of a Black man (Monk) standing next to the raised lid of a grand piano. A spotlight in in the upper right; a microphone is poking up from the bottom edge. Monk is wearing his trademark hat, and has his equally tradmark pointed beard. He's wearing a grey suit with a white shirt and dark tie. Everything is dark on stage except for Monk in profile and the aforementioned items. The lettering is quite large.

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio Thelonious Monk, Big Band and Quartet in Concert, Columbia, 1964 [this is a weird 1991 reissue]. Monk, p; Charlie Rouse, ts; Butch Warren, b; Frank Dunlop, d. Big Band adds Thad Jones, Nick Travis, Steve Lacy, Phil Woods, Gene Allen, and Eddie Bert. Fathers Day!

A Black man (Jeffries) in a crooked orange frame, with a big smile and a pale blue suit with a purple shirt with long collar points and a dark blue tenor strap with orange polka dots. His beard is full and a little fuzzy. The background to the picture is teal; to the frame itself, white with name and title in black all-lower-case.

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio Paul Jeffrey, Watershed, Mainstream, 1973. Jeffrey, tenor; Thelonious Monk Jr., drums; Richard Davis, bass; Jack Wilkins, guitar. Produced by Bob Shad. Bop & post-bop. Liner notes by the great Bob Porter.

Album cover - a close photo of a Black man, Mance, with freckles, a mustache, beard, peppered with white, and more white at his temples. He's wearing a chunky orange turtleneck. The background is pure black. The text is in a classic sixties striped font, purple on cream.

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio Junior Mance, I Believe to My Soul, Atlantic, 1968. One of the greatest soul-jazz pianists, plus David Newman, ts; Hubert Laws, ts, fl, pic; Bobby Capers, bs; Joe Newman & Jimmy Owens, t; Jimmy Tyrell, b; Ray Lucas, d; plus some others.

Album cover - a man's face, heavily distorted and blended with other bent photographs of (guessing here) a highway and cave walls, in eerie shades of blue, green, and gold.

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio Stanley Turrentine, The Man with the Sad Face, Fantasy, 1976. Well into his soul era, Stanley with Eric Gale, Cornell Dupree, Ron Carter, plus flutes, strings and more - this could almost be instrumental Barry White in places (complement).

Album cover - black & white closeup of the valves of a trumpet, with the valve tops covered with white circles with colored concentric circles -- yellow, red, yellow.

Back to #jazzonthepatio #jazzsky Stu Williamson, s/t, London [UK], 1958 [originally Bethlehem, 1956]. Stu, trumpet; Charlie Mariano, alto; Bill Holman, tenor; Jimmy Giuffre, baritone; Claude Williamson, piano; Leroy Vinnegar, bass; Mel Lewis, drums. West Coast perfection.

album cover - a black and white photo of a glass of water, with the album title printed in bold type on a submerged piece of paper, which distorts and twists the lettering. There is a big blob of color in the upper right, which appears to be a splash that's been colored in with golden yellow. There's a border of blue along the bottom. I guess it's eye-catching? I dunno. Werner Pfeiffer is the man who did it.

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio #vinyl Johnny Griffin Big Soul-Band, Wade in the Water, Riverside, 196? [reissue of 1961 with a different cover]. Griffin, Clark Terry, Julian Priester, Matthew Gee, Frank Strozier, Bobby Timmons, Harold Mabern, Charlie Persip, and a few others.

Album cover - photo of four Black men (the group, Wheeler in front) lined up one behind and to the left of the one in front. Their faces are half in shadow. They are all wearing identical black suits, medium blue shirts, black ties. They all have serious, even somber, expressions.

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio #vinyl Clarence Wheeler & the Enforcers, Doin' What We Wanna, Atlantic, 1970. Wheeler, tenor; Sonny Covington, trumpet, cowbell, tambourine; Sonny Burke, organ; George Hughes, drums. Some funky echo on the horns, too! Solid organ-tenor soul-jazz.

Album cover - a black and white photo of a Black man (Byrd), in closeup, looking at a hand of five playing cards (which we can't see, but presumably it's a royal flush, geddit). He's wearing a classic striped seersucker suit (light, puckered blue and white fabric that is famously cool in summer), white shirt, and dark tie. The title is in blue, the artist in red, the other guys in alternating black or blue, with a black "spade" suit symbol. Photo by Francis Wolff, design by Reid Miles. Everything about this cover and the record inside is absolute class.

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio #vinyl Donald Byrd, Royal Flush, Blue Note, 1961 [2024 reissue here]. Byrd, trumpet; Pepper Adams, baritone; Herbie Hancock, piano; Butch Warren, bass; Billy Higgins, drums. Hancock's second appearance on record; the first was also a Byrd LP, on Warwick. Bedrock hard bop.

Album cover - the five musicians, in color, standing in front of a large blowup of a black and white photograph of the Club Alabam in the 1940s (judging by the letter A on the right), one of the main attractions on the "52nd Street of the West", Central Avenue, the center of the Black musical world at the time, where these guys got their start. They are all wearing suits; Morgan appears to be wearing a tuxedo complete with cummerbund! Van Essen is wearing a Fair Isle sweater-vest with a red, black and white pattern under his jacket; Farmer is wearing grey Glen plaid jacket and bronze slacks, with a black shirt and pocket square. Heath has a black and white striped Kufi skullcap. All are smiling.

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio Art Farmer, Frank Morgan, Lou Levy, Eric Von Essen, Albert "Tootie" Heath, Central Avenue Reunion, 1990. Still making great music 45 years after arriving in LA in 1945. I don't think Eric was ever at the Club Alabam, since it closed about the time he was born!

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio #vinyl Art Farmer, Something You Got, CTI, 1977. Farmer, flugelhorn; Yusef Lateef, tenor; David Matthews, electric piano; Hiram Bullock, guitar; Harvie Schwartz, bass; Jim Madison, drums; David Tofani, soprano sax & flute; Sue Evans, percussion; several others.

Album cover - a photograph of a Black man (Stitt) playing his tenor sax while wearing a black suit, white shirt, and geometric tie. The color is extremely strange - it looks like a colorized back and white photo, but with a odd brownish-red tint that makes his face and hands look lobster-red, which isn't normal. The background is a cinnamon brown, with the title and artist across the top in yellow in a 70s sort of psychedelic font. 1973 was a tough time for straight ahead jazz people, I guess; Argo/Cadet would never have put out a cover like this!

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio #vinyl Sonny Stitt, Soul Girl, Paula, 1973. Side 1 has strings and voices and Richard Evans on bass; side 2 is just a quartet. Kind of nice soulful groove.

Album cover - Similar to the previous album, it's the frame resembling a 40s movie backdrop, this time in green, with stars, polka dots, and circles, and in the middle, Hamp's disembodied (even neckless) head, with trademark toothy grin. The disembodied head is a common feature on a number of Hamp's LPs (and other artists as well).

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio Lionel Hampton, Rarities, MCA Jazz Heritage Series, 1982. More! From 1946-1949, with Arnett Cobb, Johnny Griffin, and most of the players from the previous LP's sides. Swing, Jump blues, R&B, even bop (or "jump-bop" as the liner notes have it).

Album cover - inset black and white photo of a heavily sweating Black man (Hampton) in a 40s spearpoint collar shirt and painted floral tie, with his trademark huge grin, tongue partway out, looking down at his vibraharp during performance. Surrounding the photo is a variant of the standard "frame" of the Jazz Heritage Series, with a sort of showbiz lighting meant to evoke a 40s movie, with the word "JAZZ" visible as if it was on the screen, all in a rich blue color.

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio 80 degrees! Lionel Hampton, Sweatin' With Hamp 1945-1950, MCA Jazz Heritage Series, 1980. Hugely influential. Too many players to mention -- Kenny Dorham, Milt Buckner, Snooky Young, Charles Mingus, Albert Ammons, Wes Montgomery, Jimmy Cleveland, Jerome Richardson....

Album cover - a Black man (Green), siting in a rustic wheeled garden chair made from 2 by 4s and 2 by 6s, on a large patch of lawn with some shrubbery in the distant background. His feet are up on a classic picnic bench made from 2 by 4s and 2 by 8s. His battered guitar case is also leaning on the bench. He is wearing a grey and black checked sport jacket with a white dress shirt, showing French cuffs and a turquoise day cravat (scarf worn inside the shirt collar), black slacks, and black dress shoes. He has a serious expression on his face as he looks at the camera. Surrounding this photo is a yellow border, with a green bar at the top with the title in a swoopy 60s font. the background to all this is white with GRANT GREEN across the top. There is a hype sticker that reads "FEATURING The Cantaloupe Woman"; I have never seen a reproduction hype sticker on a modern reissue before.

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio Grant Green, His Majesty King Funk, Verve, 1965 [Speakers Corner reissue, 2005] Green, guitar; Candido Camero, conga & Bongo; Ben Dixon, drums; Harold Vick, tenor; Larry Young, organ. Smokin' soul-jazz. I've never seen an original.

Album cover - Wild doodled illustration with cartoons of the players and scraps of lyric - "ti ponk ti ponk", "siesta mo-jo" etc. in a scribbled, almost Jean-Michel Basquat-like style. The main picture is Diz, blowing his horn with his trademark puffed-out cheeks, wearing a pair of three-quarter-length drawstring trousers, island-style. There is a stamp of KPLU-FM, with an acquisition date of July 12, 1982, which station is still going under the new call sign KNKX, playing jazz from Tacoma, Washington (it was formerly affiliated with Pacific Lutheran University).

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio Dizzy Gillespie, Jambo Caribe, Limelight, 1964 [1984 reissue]. Dizzy Gillespie, trumpet & vocal; James Moody, tenor & flute; Kenny Barron, piano & bass; Chris White, guitar & bass; Rudy Collins, drums; Kansas Fields, percussion. Funky Latin Jazz!

Album cover - a purple-tinted black and white photo of two cats, both looking at something off to the right (food, one imagines). To the right of the photo, the list of players in the same purple, on black. Below, a purple bar to fill the cover. A folded slip of silver paper (an "obi") covers the spine and two inches of the cover on the left with a blurb about the record -- this hearkens back to the original Original Jazz Classics, which had a similarly laid out sticker on the shrinkwrap, which Craft has moved to an obi. The cover is on heavy, glossy stock .

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio Tommy Flanagan, The Cats, Prestige New Jazz, 1959 [2023 Craft/1983 Original Jazz Classics reissue] Flanagan, piano; John Coltrane, tenor; Idrees Sulieman, trumpet; Kenny Burrell, guitar; Doug Watkins, bass; Louis Hayes, drums.

Album cover - red-tinted black and white photo of a Black man (Butler) playing his guitar, which appears to be a large hollow-body electric, or "jazz box", though it is out of focus closer to the camera.

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio Billy Butler, Night Life, Prestige, 1971. Butler, guitar; Jesse Powell, tenor; Houston Person, tenor; Johnny "Hammond" Smith, organ, electric piano; Bob Bushnell, Fender bass; Jimmy Johnson, drums. Prime organ/tenor/guitar soul jazz, supervised by Bob Porter.

Album cover - large photo of a Black man (Moody), holding his tenor, dressed this time in a black pinstripe shirt instead of a suit, and his glasses are an aviator style, and his beard is full now. He has a huge grin on his face. The background is white with a thin multicolor border; on the lower far left you can see a small portion of the bell of his sax wrapped around from the rear cover photo. KRCC JAZZ is scrawled across the front again, and there's a small saw mark in the upper left, indicating a promo or cutout copy.

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio James Moody, Something Special, Novus, 1986. Moody, tenor, alto, flute; Kirk Lightsey, piano; Todd Cool man, bass; Idris Muhammad, drums. Composer-arranger-producer, Tom McIntosh. That's almost 40 years of Moody!

Album cover - a small oval photo of Moody blowing his tenor, in a grey suit and hornrims, with a light fixture in the background; the oval is laid inside the bell of a drawing of a large horn, with the tubing of a couple of other horns, drawn by someone who may not have seen a fluegelhorn before; all is laid over a golden yellow field with lettering in black and a little purple. The radio station who owned this record before wrote their call letters (KRCC) and category (JAZZ) in heavy marker. KRCC is an NPR station in southern Colorado, affiliated with Colorado College in Colorado Springs, which makes sense, because I found this in Wax Trax in Denver.

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio James Moody and the Brass Figures, Milestone, 1968. Moody, ts & fl; Kenny Barron, p; Bob Cranshaw, b; Mel Lewis, d; plus on the orchestral tunes, Joe Newman & Jimmy Owens, t & flgl; Snooky Young, t; Jimmy Cleveland, tb; Don Butterfield, tuba. Arr & cond, Tom McIntosh.

Album cover - black and white photo of Moody sitting on a stool playing tenor. He's wearing a black pinstripe suit (what a Brit would call a demob suit), with a white shirt with long "spearpoint" collar points, a geometric tie with circles, horn-rimmed glasses, a faint goatee beard, a white pocket square, and black dress shoes - basically an outfit I covet. The background is a deep purple-blue (periwinkle?), with aqua lettering and a white square behind Moody's head.

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio James Moody & his Swedish Crowns, Dragon, 1986 [recorded in Sweden in October 1949] with Leppe Sundewall, Arne Domnerus, Per-Arne Croona, Gosta Theselius, Yngve Akerberg, Sven Bolhem, Anders Burman, Lennert Kohlin, Thore Swanerud, Ulf Linde, and a few others.

Album cover - a white man (Rodney), wearing a 70s white mesh polo shirt with black piping, a big 70s watch, smoking a cigarette and holding his trumpet. The background is white, with red text and a red bar under the photo.

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio Red Rodney, Bird Lives! Muse, 1974 (white-label promo). Here's one for @birdlives1.bsky.social ! Rodney, trumpet; Charles McPherson, alto; Barry Harris, piano; Sam Jones, bass; Roy Brooks, drums. A Bebop bible, with songs by or made famous by Charlie Parker.

Album cover - I think this is torn strips of watercolor, arranged to look like mountains in the moonlight. Strips of dark blue, medium blue, orange, red, magenta, purple, grey, and then a dark blue sky above with lots of white stars. A red wolf is stamped in red foil on one of the peaks. I just noticed that I photographed the back cover, which is very much the same but with a blue wolf. Oops! There is no writing at all on either front or back, but there is some on the hype sticker (shown here) which is pink with blue and white writing. The disk itself is pink and black spatter vinyl.

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio Various Artists, Haunted High, Jazz Dispensary, 2022 (RSD). Strange comp of spacy 70s jazz-funk from Craft, from Cannonball Adderley, Woody Herman, McCoy Tyner, Flora Purim, Mongo Santamaria, Cal Tjader, Gene Ammons, and Barbara Lewis. Wild.

Album cover - photograph of the group, shot from above; four Black men and one white man. Clockwise from lower left, we have Henderson, in a blue double-breasted jacket and a black turtleneck, and a wide mustache, holding his sax; Cox, also in a blue double-breasted jacket with a white turtleneck and black slacks, and a sparse goatee and mustache, holding a sheet of music; Spencer (the white man) in a slim green tweed jacket, white shirt and blue speckled tie, with sandy hair combed to the side, and a drum in the background; Brooks, in a light blue striped blazer with black shirt and black bell-bottoms, with a mustache and beard, his bass on its side behind him; and Moore, a larger gentleman, with a black and white checked jacket, brown shirt, and red-and-brown polkadot tie, holding his trumpet. They are all smiling at the camera. The background is an unobtrusive beige. The lettering is blue, purple and green -- this is 1968 after all.

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio Introducing Kenny Cox and the Contemporary Jazz Quintet, Blue Note, 1968. Cox, piano; Charles Moore, trumpet; Leon Henderson, tenor; Ron Brooks, bass, Danny Spencer, drums. Bop and Post-bop, a little too free in places for my taste, but Cox's block chords are a YES.

A grainy black and white photo of a primitive wooden railroad crossing sign, reading CROSSINGS on on the board facing the camera, mounted at a 45 degree angle to the post; the other direction has one too, at 90 degrees from this one. Clouds are visible in the background. The players' names are run across the top in blue, yellow and green.

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio Red Garland, Ron Carter, and Philly Joe Jones, Crossings, Galaxy, 1978. These old cats can play new tricks. Ron Carter is still alive, at 88, and might be the most recorded musician ever.

Album cover -- a dark, blurry black and white photo of cars driving on a city street at night, with the Strata-East logo laid over it -- a circle with progressively thinner lines from the top to the middle, and the name of the label.

#jazzsky #jazzonthepatio Various Artists, Soul Jazz Love Strat-East, Soul Jazz, 1994. Recorded 1969-1975 for the famed jazz label. Gil Scott-Heron, Larry Ridley, Pharoah Sanders, Clifford Jordan, Charlie Rouse, Stanley Cowell, Shamek Farrah, Billy Parker, Heath Brothers. dozens of top players. A+++