Personnel:
Eddie Bert (tb), Vinnie Dean (as), Duke Jordan, Sal Mosca (p), Sal Salvador (g), Clyde Lombardi (b), Mel Zelnick, Ed Shaughnessy, Osie Johnson (d)
Reference: FSRCD 404
Bar code: 8427328604048
Eddie Bert played in Goodman's boppers from November 1948 to September 1949. By 1950 he had enough of travel and trials of the road, so Eddie decided to concentrate on making his living around New York City, where he was regularly on call for recordings with Ray McKinley, Les Elgart, Elliot Lawrence, and the Sauter-Finegan orchestra. All of which takes us to the time of the sessions here, when Eddie was under contract to Discovery Records until the label went into bankruptcy and was sold to Savoy in 1956.
Yet, back to the three Discovery sessions included in this compilation (1 to 13), all of them feature pianist Duke Jordan, another giant the public has taken much too long to appreciate. Jordan worked for Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Parker throughout much of the 1940's, and even before that he was in the right place at the right time when bop was born in clubs like Clarke Monroe's in Harlem in 1941. Bassist Clyde Lombardi is also heard throughout these sessions, a musician many of us associate largely with the late Lennie Tristano's first trio performances. Drummer Art Mardigan handles the sticks (who swung Woody Herman's Third Herd for years), and then we segue to Joe Morelloand Eddie Bert recalls this as Joe Morello's very first studio date.
Very few fans ever heard Joe Morello when he subbed for Stan Levey in Stan Kenton's 1953 powerhouse, but broadcasts survive to prove that Joe was there, and his section mate was guitarist Sal Salvador, whom you will hear on the first four tracks of this CD. Eddie Bert likes that trombone-guitar unison in the front line, and he used it again in a session with Joe Puma six months later. Bert also liked the alto saxophone sound of his Westchester County neighbor Vinnie Dean, who had boarded the band bus with Sal Salvador through most of 1952-53 as integral parts of Stan Kenton's most sublimely swinging ensemble.
The last five tracks of this album previously unreleased recordings where we hear Eddie surrounded by his usual musicians. Through the years Eddie often worked with his own jazz group, most of the time including his peers Vinnie Dean, Clyde Lombardi Duke Jordan, Art Mardigan, Eddie Shaughenessy and a variety of drummers. For some gigs he also used pianist Sal Mosca, who grew up, just like Eddie, in Mount Vernon. Mosca, who studied for eight years with Lenni Tristano, doesnt have a long list of recordings under his name, yet hes considered by his colleagues as the last living great improvisational pianist of their generation. Tristano wrote that of all the great people in jazz since the 40s, Sal Mosca is one of the greatest. We can hear all the expressive range of Sals imagination in tracks 14 to 17.
The album finishes the same way it starts, with an also unreleased long version of Kaleidoscope, tune that gives name to this compilation and was recorded live in Gobblers Inn, Point Pleasant, New Jersey in August, 1955.
