For its summer issue, the French jazz magazine, Le JazzoPhone, asked me to choose my ten Desert Island jazz recordings, the ones I play most and would not like to live without. Here they are (with a little cheating around No 7) …
1.Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington
2. Art Tatum-Ben Webster : Art Tatum Masterpieces, Vol 8
3. Roland Kirk : We Free Kings
4. Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section
5. Count Basie : The Atomic Mr Basie
6. Serge Chaloff : Blue Serge
7. Billie Holiday : The Quintessential Billie Holiday, Vols 1 – 9
8. Duke Ellington : Highlights of the Great 1940-1942 Band
9. John Lewis : Improvised Meditations & Excursions
10. Joe Temperley : Double Duke
My kind of choices… lovely! (and varied)
Same taste as Charlie Resnick!
One baritone saxophonist is careless but two….?!? Seriously though it’s a nice selection and the Temperley is in fact a little gem – as was much of the stuff released on the short lived Naxos Jazz label
Yes, this particular set with Wycliff Gordon on trombone is an especial favourite, as is an album of Monk tunes with Junior Mance on piano. If I were ever to feel sentimental about Joe T., whom I enjoyed seeing many times with Humph’s band in the 60s, I’d play his version of ‘My Love Is Like a Red Red Rose’.