Dizzy Gillespie Quintet: At Onkel Pö's Carnegie Hall

Rating: ★★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Frank Tusa (b)
Badal Roy (perc)
Richie Beirach (p)
Jeff Williams (d)
Dave Liebman (recorder, ss)

Label:

Jazzline

Dec/Jan/2019/2020

Media Format:

CD

Catalogue Number:

D77071

RecordDate:

6 June 1975

This entertaining package derives from a live Hamburg club session recorded by public radio station NDR, and covers a period of Dizzy's career that hasn't been massively documented. The basic quartet with Jones, Brown and Roker does a good job of ringing the changes, mostly with funky latin rhythms to the fore and, despite sometimes over-long solos from all concerned, Gillespie's careful shepherding of his resources is not made too obvious. Unmentioned in the packaging is the fact that Dizzy sometimes plays congas, as was his wont at the time, including a lengthy solo on ‘Diddy Wa Diddy’ (which isn't the Ry-Cooder-out-of-Blind-Blake number of the same name). But things certainly look up in the second half where the group is joined by altoist Wright, who was halfway through nearly 30 years of European residence after working for Gillespie in the late 1950s and early 1960s. There's a party atmosphere to most of the proceedings, aided by Dizzy's frequent vocals, but Wright adds a biting blues flavour missing from some of the more light-hearted moments.

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