David Murray Trio - The Hill

My first thoughts about this aren't even going to be about the music but rather the cover itself. I love the photo and it is one of those that photos that looks so great on an lp cover even if it doesn't reproduce so well here. The dark curtains blowing in the old window sets a tone for the music inside I believe. As a cd cover it is shit.  You can barely make the photo out and you're always drawn to that god awful typesetting. That lettering belongs on a Cheap Trick record but I digress.
  I mentioned in my first David Murray post that for years I had a hit and miss relationship with his music.  You see I came late to Murray and several other like minded musicians. I had no one to lead me. The only jazz my friends listened to was all too well known to me and I was the one looking ahead. So I didn't become an ardent fan of Murray's until a good 25 years after he started recording. Since then he has become a favorite.
 This record has also been a standout in his career to me. What I like about sax trio records is there is nowhere to hide. You hire a crack rhythm section and you play your heart out. Murray opens with a smoking version of "Santa Barbara and Crenshaw Follies", a track I know from an octet outing  recorded several years prior. Before this ends you know you've just gotten your money's worth and you have the rest of the lp to follow. And follow it does, without slowing down or missing a beat, that is until the last song when everyone takes a deep breath, the vibes are rolled out and we get what may be one of my favorite versions of Strayhorn's Chelsea Bridge. Link pulled, check comments

David Murray Trio

The Hill

1. Santa Barbara and Crenshaw Follies

2. The Hill

3. Fling

4. Take the Coltrane

5. Herbie Miller

6. Chelsea Bridge

David Murray - tenor sax, bass clarinet

Richard Davis - bass

Joe Chambers - drums, vibes

Black Saint, 1988   120 110-1