Stompy Jones
Posted in Jazz on Feb 14th, 2009 No Comments »
Recorded 50 years ago this week by a small band of Duke Ellington on piano, Johnny Hodges on alto sax, Harry Edison on trumpet, Les Spann guitar, Al Hall bass, Jo Jones on drums.
In an appreciation I wrote here, I summed it up as ‘excellent trumpet from Edison, good aggressive alto from Hodges, eccentric, hamfisted but engaging piano from the Duke, superb drumming from Jones.’ True, but it hardly catches the spirit of this classic performance, by musicians at the top of their game, playing with all the naturalness of players that have the idiom in their bones and nothing to prove to anyone.
