A self-styled pre-bop era player, Pepper Adams, a product of the Motor City scene, was keenly aware of the importance of having musical roots in the past. He confessed to the influence of Harry Carney, "in the way I wanted to play the horn. See, no baritone player should be afraid of the noise it makes. Carney isn’t. He gets right down into it, inside it". Adams made these recordings in 1957, the year Down Beat jazz critics chose him as the New Star of baritone sax, and the year he began to get a nationwide reputation. The firmness of his tone, the ease of his technique, his flow of ideas and their execution are always impressive.
Recorded Hackensack, New Jersey, 1957. |