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Original LP

As much as I like Andrew’s music — if I’m being honest, it’s really probably more that I really love rediscovering Andrew’s recordings — WHICH, nearly every time I listen to them (whether it’s been a couple of months, or a year since I’ve listened to a particular album), it’s almost like hearing most of them for the very first time. Not exactly, and less so for Black Fire (which I’ve probably heard the most often) — but for practically all of the rest Andrew’s catalog, it’s a little almost like don’t know these recordings, no matter how many times I’ve heard them before. They’re (almost) always ‘new’ to me — or hearing them is more like hearing them for the first time, to a degree unlike nearly anything else in the entire Blue Note catalog. I might (almost) love most of Andrew’s BN output — but what I really love is how they’ve kept me guessing with their unpredictability, for 30 years this year. I got the Hill Mosaic big-box in 1995, my second-only Mosaic purchase, which I really only got because of all the sidemen on it — and I’d only ever heard Point of Departure before that, and didn’t really know what to make of it, neither loving nor hating it back then.  And it also took me a solid 5 years(!) to even half-digest the Hill big box. All that said, I also don’t see him as some monumental jazz ‘auteur’. Every musician I’ve ever talked to who played with Hill for any length of time has described some experience similar to having questions (lots of questions) for Hill about what to do here, or the meaning of vague charts (to put it charitably) — nearly every time, Hill’s reply was a quiet/tepid “what do you think? He seemed like the LEAST assertive ‘leader’ in all of jazz. And yet, one could perhaps argue Hill’s actual approach wasn’t all that different than Miles — hire great and creative sidemen, and leverage their strengths. (And Hill probably did arguably ‘write’ more in his process, than Miles did in his.) Anyway, I love Hill’s Hill’s BN’s — but largely because of the way they seem to almost force “continual rediscovery” — at least in my case.

Original LP

The weekend bottle was: Feudi del Duca, Fiano, Puglia, Italy 2022

Now spinning: Milt Jackson - Second Nature: The Savoy Sessions (Savoy/Arista, 2 LPs, rec. 1956) with Lucky Thompson