J.R. MOnterose

[king ubu]

Another very good Monterose date came to mind when I read the thread on "In Action". "Body and Soul" was recorded live in the Netherlands, on January 31, 1970, with Jon Eardley and a very tight local rhythm section (Rein de Graaff, p; Henk Haverhoek, b; Pierre Courbois, d). It's a real shame this is not a quintet affair in its entirety (there are two trio features and a feature for Eardley and Monterose, and two quintet tracks. Eardley does "Old Folks", the trio does "How Deep Is the Ocean" and a de Graaff original, the quintet does another de Graaff tune and Monterose's "Short Bridge", however, the real highlite is J.R.'s take on "Body and Soul". This is another one which belongs in the row of great tenor sax interpretations of that tune!

The disc was reissued by Blue Moon in 2000, seems to be available from the Freshsound-site.

Anyone has heard it?

ubu

[JSngry]

Yeah, I have it in a stack of things I've given a cursory listen to and am awaiting the time to give a proper in-depth checking out. First impression was that I dug it. It's got kind of a "dark" vibe to it, not in a bad way, but more like the "this is another day in the life of the wandering minstrels, who knows what they've seen in their travels, well, here they are this time, let's listen in and hear what stories they have to tell us this time" kind of dark. I dug it quite a bit, even if as an album per se it seemed to slightly lack cohesion. That comes with the territory. And JON EARDLEY! Hadn't heard from him since the 50s!

Definitely one that will be revisited for further explorations.

[paul secor]

I'm pretty much with Jim on this one. I have it, have listened to it once, and it left the impression of a record that was possibly thrown together in the studio. By that, I mean that it's not really a J.R. session and it's not really a Jon Eardley session. According to the discography I have, it was a Rein de Graaff session, which makes sense, since he plays on all the cuts. Perhaps he brought J.R. and Jon Eardley into the studio to play on some of the tracks. All that said, I love J.R.'s playing and he plays some good things here, even if it's not my favorite J.R. recording. The bottom line is that I'll have to sit down at some time and give it at least a couple more listenings. And as I say, there's some good J.R. here, so whatever my opinion turns out to be, this CD is going to remain in my collection.