Joh Yamada [Bluestone]
Joh Yamada is a name few have heard of in the western hemisphere, he recorded this session in New York in 1997, he mainly plays in his native Japan, where he is supposedly really big among Jazz lovers.
Sticking exclusively to Alto, his influences are Sonny Stitt and of course Charlie Parker, it's a fairly middle of the road record, he doesn't stray far from tonality, or go off on any oblique angles, sounds like he's from the old school of Jazz.
This is a disc that i bought while browsing the Jazz section in a record shop, i liked the cover so i bought it, at first i wasn't too impressed, it's just too average, it's taken me a long time to warm to this disc, each time i play it there's something to enjoy, it's far from a great album, but also it's far from an album that i would purge from my collection too.
I enjoyed the lovely beauty of track 5 'Never Let Me Go', but on this listen i was very impressed with track 6 'The Sacred Eyes', a Yamada original, after a bass solo by Rodney Whittaker, the piece takes of with a sharp hit of the drum by Clarence Penn on 0:54, a really nice effect indeed, later in the piece the saxophone returns after a piano solo by Cyrus Chestnut, and Chestnut's embellishments at 4:26-4:31 are very clever, Yamada doesn't possess that last ounce of wild abandon that would make him great, but this was very enjoyable.
