As Marc Myers writing on JazzWax recently notes: ''This album is a clear reminder of how critically important the drums were to the sound and spirit of bop and hard bop in the 1940s and 50s.'' Amen to that. Louis Hayes, 87, is sounding engaged and up for it on a series of well selected bebop warhorses with his own tune 'G' snuck in kept to the end. As regular readers know we are fans of vibist Steve Nelson 70 on Sunday who's here in the Hayes band and as spirited as ever. Tenorist Abraham Burton, pianist David Hazeltine and another blog favourite bassist Dezron Douglas complete the band. Burton wails nicely on the Hayes number. He's even better on the Bobby Troup ballad 'You're Looking At Me.' We haven't heard a cover of Dizzy Gillespie's 'Tour de Force' which Diz played in the 50s on a co-credited recording called The Trumpets of Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie and Harry Edison since Joey Alexander's featuring Alphonso Horne approaching a decade ago. So that's a good relative rarity these days to cop a bit of. It's one of the delights. There's plenty of Bird too with treatments of 'My Little Suede Shoes,' 'Cheryl' and 'Dewey Square' to keep the whole thing grounded.
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