Texas Tenor: Booker Ervin Sextet, Quintet and Quartet -3 LPs on 2 CDs-

STEREO 24 BIT DIGITALLY REMASTERED 3 LPs on 2 CDs I just heard a tenor who cuts just about everybody, saxophonist Shafi Hadi, then a Charles Mingus sideman, told his boss in the late 50s. He doesn t play just changes; he plays music. That was Booker Ervin (1930-1970), a hard-blowing Texas tenor whose influences included Lester Young, Dexter Gordon and John Coltrane. But when Mingus hired him after Ervin hit New York in 1958, his huge, blues-inflected sound and personal approach were unmistakeable. The Mingus profile led to his recordings as leader. In his three earliest, collected here, his sheer force of personality and ideas refreshed the hard bop genre. The Book Cooks and Cookin are solidly swinging dates, full of Ervin s strong soloing, with excellent contributions from Zoot Sims and Tommy Flanagan on the first, and Horace Parlan, and Richard Williams on the second; both include bassist George Tucker and Mingus drummer Dannie Richmond. Best of all is That s It! with Parlan, Tucker and drummer Al Harewood, and a leader in such sublimely powerful form that the hard bop boundaries hardly contained him.