Blue And Sentimental - Ike Quebec (1962)
I came across this one years ago on some online radio station or other. It stuck out to me immediately for its soft tone, its structural simplicity, and its straightforward bluesy vocabulary.
Quebec’s story is a tragic one: a rising star in the 40s, he spent most of the 50s dealing with drug addiction and jailtime related to that drug addiction. He got things back on track in 1961 and 1962, when he recorded this and several other excellent sessions, only to die in 1963 from lung cancer.
This session features a non-traditional quartet. The rhythm section of Philly Joe Jones and Paul Chambers was about as standard as you could get, having worked together for years in the first Miles Davis Quintet, with Coltrane, Hank Mobley, Freddie Hubbard, and many others.
Normally a sax quartet would be filled out with a pianist, but this one featured the Blue Note house musician Grant Green on guitar instead. Green was an interesting cat on his own, never fully feeling confident enough to record as a bandleader despite being one of the most influential guitarists in jazz. His playing here leaves a lot of space for Quebec to shine through, rather than being buried under the heavy harmonics of a piano. When Green takes solos, they’re excellent, and fit in wonderfully with Quebec’s ideas.
This is a masterpiece of a record that a lot of people don’t know about. If you haven’t heard it, I hope I’ve helped to change that.
