Alexander Hawkins

Thanks for all these! Please do keep them coming! I think the tenor 'battle' is just a particularly compelling setting. I don't know why; some reasons, I guess, are (a) that very full sound unison tenors get; with the various players' sounds being sufficiently different to one another that the whole thing sounds spontaneous, and none too clinical; (B) the intrigue of the setting really making you listen to 'who does what to whom' (quotes, doubling up, all the rest of it...) © the involving way that everyone is so damn keen to get out of the head, and just to get down to business; but then also the way they thunder back into the head at the end of the tune; (d) the combative element, but then also (e) the fact that actually, it's all in such good spirits, 'battle' is perhaps something of a misnomer. In fact, actually, taxonomy is useless. I just LOVE them!

I seem to remember a thread like this on the BNBB, but... Seeing as I'm probably going to get evicted I've been playing Lock and Griff's 'Battle Stations' so loud , could people please suggest some similar dates (and their favourites) so I could do the job in style?!? Thanks as ever! p.s. I have 'Blowin' in from Chicago', the Rollins/Stitt date, Tenor Madness, and I think that's it!

From someone trying to get into this music, who just got Ayler's 'Spiritual Unity', LOOK NO FURTHER!!!!!!

Cecil and Andrew Hill, for sure. I wasn't thinking of Ray Bryant, but after I saw him live and heard him play the hell out of 'After Hours' (just like on that Rollins/Stitt album!), he's got to be there. And what do you guys think of Stephen Scott? I have to say, I really enjoyed his playing when I saw him with Sonny. Monster solo on 'Tenor Madness'. And, I've only got one disk of his (at present), but on the basis of that and a live show, Muhal Richard Abrams gets my vote no.5!