A key report from Pacific Jazz’s Nineteen Sixties-era output, saxophonist Curtis Amy and drummer Frank Butler’s Groovin’ Blue, is getting a particular vinyl launch subsequent month.
On March seventh, the album will formally be part of the Tone Poet Audiophile Vinyl Reissue Sequence, a collaboration between Blue Be aware Data and UMe. The brainchild of Blue Be aware President Don Was, every reissue within the collection is curated and supervised by Joe Harley, a.ok.a. the “Tone Poet,” and mastered by Kevin Grey. Since 2007, the duo have collaborated on over 100 Blue Be aware reissues, together with current additions to the collection like Hank Mobley’s 1967 report Third Season, and Amy’s 1963 effort with trumpeter Dupree Bolton, Katanga.
Recorded between 1960 and 1961, Groovin’ Blue marked the Texas-born, LA-based Amy’s second launch on Pacific Jazz, which he signed with in 1960. The Groovin’ Blue classes additionally boast among the earliest identified recordings of vibraphonist and marimba participant Bobby Hutcherson, who was solely 19 years previous on the time and went on to affect the likes of Steve Nelson, Joe Locke and Stefon Harris. Rounding out the instrumentalists featured on the six-song LP are pianist Frank Strazzeri, bassist Jimmy Bond and trumpeter Carmell Jones, who made his recorded debut on Groovin’ Blue.
Highlights throughout the monitor record embody opener “Gone Into It,” the title monitor, and the Hutcherson-written ballad “Beautiful You.” Grey mastered the brand new version of Groovin’ Blue off unique analog tapes—it’s been pressed on 180g vinyl by Document Know-how Inc.
In a 2023 interview with SoundStage!, Harley shared that a part of his objective in crafting the Tone Poet collection was to present listeners the expertise of listening to a few of historical past’s biggest musicians work in actual time. A part of that work entails relying solely on grasp tapes, the identical method Blue Be aware and Pacitic Jazz did at their prime.
“In the case of the Blue Note and Pacific Jazz sessions of the ’50s and up through the mid-to-late ’60s, these were all recorded live direct to mono, or later, to two-track stereo,” he defined. “The mixing happened as the musicians were playing. There was no ‘fixing it in the mix.’ There’s only one master tape—that IS the mix. And that’s what we use.”
Order Curtis Amy and Frank Butler’s Groovin’ Blue now.
