What a knockout! Maybe the SQ version is underwhelming, but the Robin reel is a stunner. I say this about pretty much every “legacy” release I hear, but this is crying out for a commercial remaster on a modern hi-res format.
An adventurous, eclectic, high-energy set. This is Ellis at the peak of his imaginative powers.
I don’t know Phil Macy’s other mixes—I’m not a Janis Joplin fan, and the rest are easy-listening titles—but I’d love to know how he got these sorts of results with a big band, especially in a live club setting. (And not just any big band: this one comes with a string quartet, a wind quartet, a brass octet, and two drumkits.) I’m guessing the fancy electric pickups they were trying out on this session helped. Solos are always discretely placed, and there’s great separation generally between fronts and rears—even between alto and tenor saxes, no mean feat—with little to no bleed. On at least one track, you hear snare, toms, hi-hat and cymbals in four different channels. Brass and reeds are all close-mic’d and in-your-face, and on several cuts the strings are prominently spread across the rears, though on other tracks, they’re squeezed into the left rear corner with the piano and electric keyboards. On the downside: the piano isn’t well-mic’d—or maybe it just wasn’t a great instrument to begin with—and it sounds a little distant and tinny. The entire recording is super-bright, moreover, and needs a bass boost. (If only Ellis had stuck with his earlier three-bass big-band concept.)
A “9,” only because of the less-than-perfect sonics.
By the way: liner notes
here; and that documentary
@Quad Linda mentioned still seems to be available from the
UK and
Germany.
