User:Eugenia ioessa/The Amazing Bud Powell, Vols. 1 & 2

This article refers to volume 1 of the series The Amazing Bud Powell''. For the full catalog of Powell recordings for Blue Note, please see The Complete Blue Note and Roost Recordings.''

'The Amazing Bud Powell, Vols. 1 & 2' are a pair of separate but related albums by American jazz pianist Bud Powell, recorded on August 8, 1949, May 1, 1951 and August 14, 1953 and released on Blue Note in March and April 1956, respectively. The pair compile Powell's first three sessions for Blue, leading rhythm sections Tommy Potter and Roy Haynes, Curley Russell and Max Roach, and George Duvivier and Art Taylor respectively; Powell, Potter and Haynes were also joined by horn section Fats Navarro and Sonny Rollins.

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Original release
The three sessions were originally released as 10"s on Blue Note's 5000 series as The Amazing Bud Powell (BLP 5003) and The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 2 (BLP 5004)

The album was first released in April 1952 as a 10" LP in. This collected together eight tracks (four from each session) that had previously been released as 78 rpm singles in 1949 and 1951: "You Go to My Head c/w Ornithology" (BN 1566), "Bouncing with Bud c/w Wail" (BN 1567), "Over the Rainbow c/w A Night in Tunisia" (BN 1576), and "Un Poco Loco c/w It Could Happen to You" (BN 1577).

In March 1956, the album was re-issued as a 12" LP (BLP 1503), with seven additional tracks (including alternate takes, then a rarity) from both sessions, while "You Go to My Head" from the first session, and "Over the Rainbow" and "It Could Happen To You" (master take) from the second were moved to The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 2, initiating the spread of the two sessions between the two volumes. This track listing was kept for the first digital remastering in 1985, when the album was re-issued on vinyl and cassette.

The album was first released in 1954 as a 10" LP (BLP 5041), including eight master takes from the 1953 session, four of which were also released as 78 rpm singles: "I Want to Be Happy" c/w "The Glass Enclosure" (BN 1628), and "Sure Thing" c/w "Collard Greens and Black-Eye Peas (BN 1629).

In May 1956, the album was re-issued as a 12" LP (BLP 1504) with four additional tracks. Said release initiated the mixing of the 1953 session with two sessions (from 1949 and 1951) originally on The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 1. The first digital remastering dates back to 1985, when the album was re-issued on vinyl and cassette, and kept the LP track listing.

1989
The album was remastered and re-issued on CD in 1989 in chronological order with additional, alternate takes. This version is also available along with Powell's 1947 Roost session on the first disc of The Complete Blue Note and Roost Recordings, a 4 disc box set. The album was remastered again in 2001 by Rudy Van Gelder and re-issued as part of Blue Note's The RVG Edition series, with further expansion and reorganization.

In 1989, the album was digitally remastered and released on CD. This time the tracks were listed in session chronological order, which involved "A Night in Tunisia" (both takes), "It Could Happen to You" (alternate take) and "Parisian Thoroughfare" moving to The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 2 and "You Go to My Head", "Ornithology" (alternate take) and "Over the Rainbow" moving back. Three further alternate takes from the 1949 session were added, completing the session on this volume. The 1951 session still straddled the two volumes.

In 1989, the album was digitally remastered and released on CD with the tracks listed in session chronological order, leaving five tracks from the 1951 session on the volume.

2001
In 2001, Rudy Van Gelder remastered the albums from scratch (he'd previously been credited with disc transfers on the 1989 remaster), and the album was re-issued as part of Blue Note's The RVG Edition series. This release finally united the two complete sessions on one disc, with all second session material on Vol. 2 being transferred. The track listing was also altered so that alternate takes were grouped after the master takes of each session, avoiding the somewhat relentless take repetition of the 1989 release.

It was remastered in 2001 by Rudy Van Gelder and reissued as part of Blue Note's RVG Edition series. Prior to this, on all releases bar the first, the album also contained a number of tracks from sessions originally on The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 1. The version of the album included on the second disc of The Complete Blue Note and Roost Recordings, a 4 disc box set, is that from the first CD release in 1989.

In 2001, Rudy Van Gelder remastered the album from scratch, and the album was re-issued as part of Blue Note's RVG Edition series. This release re-instated the volume as just containing the 1953 session (this time in full), moving all 1951 material back to The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 1, and adding "I've Got You Under My Skin", two alternate takes of "Autumn in New York", an alternate take of "Sure Thing" and an extra alternate take of "Reets and I". The track listing was changed to group the alternate takes after the master takes.

Critical reception
The album is rated highly within Powell's musical library, described by All About Jazz as "among the pianist's most important recordings" and by The Complete Idiot's Guide to Jazz (in conjunction with volume two) as "a great introduction to this awesome pianist". Jazz critic Scott Yanow characterized it in his book Jazz on Record as "full of essential music". The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings included the pair in its suggested “core collection” of essential recordings.

In Bebop: The Best Musicians and Recordings, Yanow identifies among the highlights of the album "Bouncing with Bud", "52nd Street Theme" and "Dance of the Infidels," performed by the "very exciting quintet" of 1949, and also the 1951 trio's "three stunning versions of 'Un Poco Loco'". Barry Kernfeld in The Blackwell Guide to Recorded Jazz notes with regards to "Un Poco Loco" that "the three takes [of the song]...enable us to hear the evolution of a masterpiece", a label with which a critic at The New York Times concurred.

The album is critically prized among Powell's releases. Among the more discussed of the album's tracks is the pianist's composition "Un Poco Loco" ("A Little Crazy"), which has been singled out by critics and cultural historians for its musical and cultural significance.

While the song "Un Poco Loco" has been identified as musically outstanding, it has also been discussed as culturally significant. According to Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop, although Afro-Cuban jazz had been introduced in the 1940s by such artists as Dizzy Gillespie and Machito, "Un Poco Loco" is a significant marker in the establishment of this musical genre, as it revealed "the Afro-Cuban turn settling into bebop's acceptable field of rhetorical conventions". More than Afro-Cuban, the authors of that book detect what they describe as a "Pan-African" musical influence in the composition's repetition, harmony and cyclic solo that, while not as obviously Afro-international as Gillespie's "A Night in Tunisia', "certainly signaled a 'blackness' that became part of the language of subsequent expressions of modern jazz." The book Jazz 101 indicates that Powell's performances of this material in 1951 was "all the more astonishing" in its "level of creativity, and even authenticity" because little was known at the time of African music or how Latin music (aside from the Cuban influence) could be applied to jazz. According to Yanow, in Afro-Cuban Jazz: The Essential Listening Companion, this composition was Powell's only involvement with Afro-Cuban Jazz.

August 9, 1949

 * Bud Powell – piano
 * Fats Navarro – trumpet (except "You Go to My Head", "Ornithology")
 * Sonny Rollins – tenor saxophone (except "You Go to My Head", "Ornithology")
 * Tommy Potter – bass
 * Roy Haynes – drums

May 1, 1951

 * Bud Powell – piano
 * Curley Russell – bass (except "Over the Rainbow", "It Could Happen to You")
 * Max Roach – drums (except "Over the Rainbow", "It Could Happen to You")

August 14, 1953

 * Bud Powell – piano
 * George Duvivier – bass
 * Art Taylor – drums

Original

 * Alfred Lion – producer
 * Doug Hawkins – recording engineer
 * Rudy Van Gelder – mastering
 * John Hermansader – design
 * Francis Wolff – photography
 * Leonard Feather – liner notes

Reissue

 * Michael Cuscuna – producer
 * Rudy Van Gelder – disc transfers (1989); disc transfers, digital audio restoration and mastering (2001)
 * Ron McMaster (1989) – digital transfers
 * Leonard Feather (1989), Bob Blumenthal (2001) – liner notes