Kenny Burrell‘s classic 1959 live album On View At The Five Spot Cafe is receiving a new expanded rerelease. The Tone Poet Vinyl Edition of On View At The Five Spot Café: The Complete Masters features six previously unreleased tracks. Burrell’s frequent collaborators of the era’s performances are also captured on this set. Burrell’s band consists of Art Blakey on drums, Tina Brooks on tenor saxophone, Roland Hanna and Bobby Timmons on piano, and Ben Tucker on bass, with Burrell of course taking the lead on jazz guitar.
Once he joined Blue Note, though, his career moved quickly. Four years later, On View At The Five Spot Cafe became Burrell’s fourth album with Blue Note as bandleader, and his ninth overall. Over the next six decades, Burrell released dozens more albums, and collaborated with fellow musical greats like Chet Baker, Quincy Jones, and Aretha Franklin. In the 1970s, the artist left New York for Los Angeles, where he still serves as the Director of Jazz Studies at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School Of Music. With such a long and celebrated career, people are still finding new recordings from Burrell—and some of them are here on On View at the Five Spot Cafe: The Complete Masters.
“That was a real jazz club,” recalls Burrell. “It was good to play there because you knew that the audience was sophisticated in terms of jazz. They knew the jazz musicians and they expected a certain level of jazz if you were playing at the Five Spot. I was happy to be there as a musician.” (Kenny Burrell)
“This has long been one of my favorite live jazz albums, something I picked up in college over 50 years ago,” says Harley. “There’s such a deep and relaxed vibe, these guys were obviously familiar with each other’s playing and very at-ease on the gig. I always wished I could have been there. Putting the masters up when we were cutting this, I felt like my wish had come true. Even better, there were so many great tracks I had never heard before! Let’s journey back to August 25, 1959, and meet at the Five Spot Café in New York City for a stellar evening of jazz!” (Joe Harley)
1. BIRKS WORKS (Dizzy Gillespie)
2. HALLELUJAH* (Youmans)
3. LADY BE GOOD (Gershwin)
4. LOVER MAN (Ramirez)
5. 36-23-36* (Burrell)
6. SWINGIN’ (Clifford Brown)
7. IF YOU COULD SEE ME NOW (Tad Dameron, Carl Sigman)
8. BEEF STEW BLUES (Randy Weston)
9. THE NEXT TIME YOU SEE ME, THINGS WON’T BE THE SAME (Earl Forest, Bill Harvey)
10. THE TAKE OFF (Burrell)
11. BIRKS WORKS – Alternate Take (Dizzy Gillespie)
12. LADY BE GOOD – Alternate Take (Gershwin)
13. LOVE WALKED IN (George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin)
14. 36-23-36 / THE THEME (Burrell)