Personnel:
Jimmy Raney (g), Bob Brookmeyer (v-tb), Al Cohn (ts), John Williams, Hall Overton, Dick Katz, Hank Jones (p), Red Mitchell, Whitey Mitchell, Teddy Kotick (b), Osie Johnson, Jack Edie (d)
Reference: FSRCD 625
Bar code: 8427328606257
Two of Jimmy Raney's most remarkable albums make up this set. The performances on the first feature Bob Brookmeyer, Al Cohn, and Red Mitchell, all felicitous choices, since, in addition to being compatible and inventive soloists, their presence adds to the tonal palette and avoids the similarity in tonal color of most guitar records. But Raney also shows that his superiority in the quick, alert swinging of the up tempo tunes is balanced by his lyric work on the ballads.
For the second album he teamed up once again with Brookmeyer, adding Osie Johnson, Teddy Kotick, adding pianists Dick Katz and Hank Jones, who combine taste and imagination with swinging time, on four tunes each. Among the several virtues of this quality example of the art of improvisation on relatively challenging thematic-and-chordal structures is the lucidity and logic with which all here approach, develop, and round off their solos. And, as with all of Raney's work, the music is polished, coherent and formidably well conceived and performed.
"'Jimmy Raney's In Three Attitudes' reissues that album plus Jimmy Raney Features Bob Brookmeyer, both from 1956. Raney, one of the most influential guitarists of the 1950s, is heard playing inventive cool jazz in quartets and quintets which co-star either valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer, Al Cohn on tenor or pianist Hall Overton. The laidback music is full of quiet discoveries."
Scott Yanow -Los Angeles Jazz Scene
