Paul Bley is the stunning Canadian jazz piano virtuoso who isn't Oscar Peterson. Unlike his compatriot, he has never been a household name, but is celebrated in jazz for his tireless enthusiasm for new routes, for influencing Keith Jarrett, and for being the resident bandleader at LA's Hillcrest Club in the 1950s. You get a very strong sense of Bley's teeming virtuosity from these very early takes - recorded between 1953 and 1954 - but relatively little of his later radicalism, because the idiom is mostly conventional bebop. But as ideas-packed piano music in that style goes, these 19 tracks are often dazzling, while the presence of Charles Mingus and Percy Heath on bass and Art Blakey on drums render this set a cut above the usual archive-trawling. - John Forham
Tracks
01. Like some one in love (Burke-Van Heusen)
02. Opus 1 (P.Bley)
03. Walkin' (R.Carpenter)
04. Spontaneous combustion (P.Bley)
05. Split Kick (H.Silver)
06. I can't get started (Duke-Gershwin)
07. Santa Claus is coming to town (Gillespie-Coots)
08. Drum one (P.Bley)
09. Autumn breeze (M.Jackson)
10. That old feeling (L.Brown-S.Fain)
11. There will never been another you (H.Warren-M.Gordon)
12. My old flame (S.Coslow-A.Johnston)
13. Topsy (E.W.Battle-E-Durham)
14. My heart stood still (P.Bley)
15. Time on my hands (Youmans-Gordon-Adamson)
16. This can't be love (Rodgers-Hart)
17. My one and only (Gershwin)
18. I want to be happy (Youmans-Caesar)
19. 52nd Street Theme (T.Monk)
PAUL BLEY piano
CHARLES MINGUS bass (1-7)
ART BLAKEY drums (1-7)
AL LEVITT drums
PERCY HEATH bass (8-14)
PETER IND bass (15-19)
Recorded at New York City, November 30, 1953 (1-7), August 27, 1954 (8-14), August 30, 1954
Fresh Sound Records. FSR-CD 386
www.freshsoundrecords.com