COMPOSERS: Various
LABELS: Verve
PERFORMER: Woody Herman (cl, as), with his big band
CATALOGUE NO: LPR Series 589 490-2
Recorded when the big-band era was long gone this album reveals how the idiom was far from exhausted. The Herman album represents the renaissance of his band after more than a decade in the doldrums following his great triumphs in the Forties.
This album should number among anyone’s ‘essential jazz purchases’ and its reappearance in the catalogue reminds us that complete box sets of Herman’s Swingin’ Young Herd and Mulligan’s Concert Jazz Band are long overdue. Stuart Nicholson