Sunday, August 22, 2010

Charles McPherson - New Horizons


If you're a hardcore be-bopper, this probably won't suit your fancy quite as well as Live In Tokyo, but if you're a child of that 70s period of Jazz, this is about as good as it gets. Tucker is in top form as a sideman (his strongest role, IMHO) and McBee is unconscious, as usual. This is a great period for McBee, and while maybe a step past prime for Freddie Waits, he's still burning and this is a very solid, straight ahead Jazz date during a period when the rhodes and crossover were favored. McPherson is sort of the forgotten soldier -- no one seems to discuss him much and he's always been under recorded. There are no anthems here, and I won't use the word 'clinic' to describe this music because there is nothing clinical about it (a fault much of the 70s/80s Jazz seems to suffer from). This is honest, productive, interesting and enjoyable Jazz, the way it was intended to be.


  1. Promise
  2. I'll Never Stop Loving You
  3. Night Eyes
  4. Horizons
  5. Samba D'Orfeo
  6. Dee Blues

Charles McPherson - alto sax
Mickey Tucker - piano
Cecil McBee - bass
Freddie Waits - drums

Recorded September 28, 1977

Xanadu 149

1 comment:

sasha said...

Awesome set of Charles McPherson posts..Xanadu really kept the flame burnin' for be-bop when others weren't interested..Great to hear them now..Cheers!