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Now Jazz Now or Now Jazz 45–65 years ago?

kh1958 already listed a Billy Strayhorn piece, but there's an entire Strayhorn-Ellington-Johnny Hodges aggregate that's a special wing of Ellingtonia that's uniquely sad and beautiful. These reach the highest musical standards of all time and are never maudlin. "Blood Count" "Passion Flower" "Ballad for the Very Tired and Very Sad Lotus Eaters" "Isfahan" ...more! And also related to Ellington, here is Abbey Lincoln's for-the-ages "Come Sunday" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAvN_ygGtdM

Merry Christmas!

Since nobody osted this so far as I can see: Merry Christmas to you all!

Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most - when sung by Helen Merrill on her 1969 Milestone LP.

Junior Cook Quintet, You Leave Me Breathless (Steeplechase) The only Christmas album in my collection.

It's not about flagging members. Of course politically motivated decisions affect the jazz world, but experience showed that discussing these here does not lead anywhere.

+1.

Hard to respond to this without getting flagged for political content!

You made no mention of the Horace Silver Band with Mobley. I find it a close call between the Bands with Cook and with Mobley. I prefer both to the the ones that came later.

Percy plays great there!

Kennedy Center’s Christmas Eve Jazz Show Cancelled After Trump Name Change

That definitely sounds like an interesting area for exploration and explanation/analysis. I’ve only recently come to the conclusion that Cook (plus Mitchell, with an honorable mention to Louis Smith) were really the best — and maybe even ideal — front-line for Horace. I slept on Horace quite a bit for a decade or two because — for me — I usually found his albums with JoeHen slightly lacking. Don’t want to overstate that — but for me they never seemed to quite click as well/hard as I felt they should. But it’s only been in the last half-dozen-years that I went back and really spent some time with the Mitchell/Cook Silver band — which ON PAPER (for me) always seemed like it ought to have been somehow ‘lesser’ than the Silver albums that came after Mitchell/Cook. (And that’s entirely my own biases that frankly let me come to that utterly wrong conclusion.) Now I think Cook maybe did some of his very best work with Silver — and those bands with him were among the best things Silver ever recorded.

More Bobby Gordon, with another Bob. Booby Gordon and Bob Wilbur “Yearnings” Arbors cd

Very happy to share two tunes featuring Percy France and Papa Jo Jones ... I learned a couple of months back that Percy was the last tenor saxophonist to play in Papa Jo Jones & Friends but was so disappointed to not find any recorded examples of those gigs to date. But a WKCR Benefit at The West End is better than none. With Loren Schoenberg (piano) and Skinny Burgan (bass):

“Bobby Gordon Plays Joe Marsala: Low Register” Another great Bobby Gordon cd on Arbors. He’s a great interpreter of 'thirties swing music in particular by clarinet leaders. Bobby Gordon-clarinet Randy Reinhart-trumpet Keith Ingham-piano, celeste and arrangements Russell George-violin James Chirillo-guitar Vince Giodano-bass Arnie Kinsella and Steve Little-drums