'Somalia' from Look Out! new from hard bop supergroup The Cookers, drawn from the release, this time on London label Gearbox, is streaming. The David Weiss-produced affair has Weiss on trumpet with Billy Harper on tenor saxophone, Eddie Henderson (who made jazz history with Herbie Hancock on Mwandishi, Crossings and Sextant) trumpet, Donald Harrison alto sax, George Cables on piano, Forest Flower legend Cecil McBee, on double bass, and Henderson's fellow Mwandishi bandmate and new NEA Jazz Master Billy Hart on drums completing the septet.
'Somalia' is the title track of Harper's Evidence label album dating back to a mid-1990s release on which Henderson also appears. This new version has a different arrangement and is half the duration of the 90s version.
Look Out! was recorded at the Van Gelder studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, the most revered jazz recording studio in the world, the tunes are originals by McBee, Harper and Cables. Darrel Sheinman's Gearbox has long since proved itself since its early Little Giant period to have the best recorded sound quality of any current indie-jazz label partly thanks to their taste and peerless mastering engineering. The Cookers take their name from Freddie Hubbard's 1965 Blue Note album The Night of the Cookers and earlier albums have appeared on the Plus Loin, Jazz Legacy, Motéma and Smoke Sessions labels. Look Out! release date is 24 September. The Cookers, top, photo: Gearbox
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