By way of introduction, I must confess that I am a long-time superfan and champion of Freddie Hubbard’s woefully-derided 1976 album Windjammer. Hubbard, fronting a group of familiar-sounding studio cats, is at the top of his game here, blowing beautifully over Bob James’s electric charts. Everything clicks here, with the possible exception of the regrettable…
“Fair Weather” – Herbie Hancock with Chet Baker (1986)
On a summer day in 1985, trumpeter and vocalist Chet Baker walked in to a Paris studio to record one song, “Fair Weather,” for the soundtrack to French director Bertrand Tavernier’s (1941-2021) film ‘Round Midnight. Other musicians on the date included pianist Herbie Hancock, the film’s musical supervisor, bassist Pierre Michelot and drummer Billy Higgins.…
Jay Chattaway: The Jazz Years (1974-81)
Composer Jay Chattaway is best known for the prodigious amount of music he contributed to the venerated Star Trek franchise. He scored 42 episodes of The Next Generation series (1990-94), 59 episodes of the Deep Space Nine series (1993-99), 54 episodes of Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001) and 28 episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise (2001-05). In…
Montreux Summit 1 & 2 (1977-78)
Having only recently realized these discs were issued on CD – but now out of print – I wanted to track them down to hear if they had anything new to say. I had both sets when they were first released, but I remember not playing them very much. At the time, my interest was…