Five HUGE Stars! This treasure trove of recently discovered performances from 1957 in Indianapolis, Indiana by legendary jazz Hall of Fame guitar virtuoso Wes Montgomery, brothers Buddy and Monk Montgomery and friends is worthy of Six stars. Recorded in 3 sessions just before his breakout years with the Pacific Jazz and Riverside record companies, Wes is in incredible form, on the level of his legendary performances. Unbelievably, the tapes were originally offered on eBay and eventually found their way to ..
88 years ago, March 6th, Wes Montgomery was born. It was no accident that this album was released then. The holy trinity of jazz guitarists is widely acknowledged as being Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian and Wes. Here we get a sample of his earliest recordings, and the first full album of `new' material in 25 years. This isn't the same old hash, remixed, rearranged and served up to an undying public. These recordings haven't been heard by the general public and the original tapes were thought to be lost..
It's good that these recordings can now be heard by a wider audience, especially amongst Wes fans. The information and pictures in the attached booklet (CD version) are informative and well put together. The sound quality is OK and I'd love to hear the tapes the engineers had to work with. As for the actual music on this release, not shouting the praises of other reviews but a couple of the tracks are pretty darn good (especially the first one). The most interesting track for me was the last one, an improvi..
