Louie Bellson: Jazz Giants

Louie Bellson lives in the best of all possible worlds. Equipped with a superbly honed talent as a drummer, long experience as a composer, and unanimous respect as a leader, he is able to choose his gigs in a variety of settings; He has pools of musicians who make up his East Coast and West Coast big bands, a smaller group with which he has toured internationally accompanying Mrs. Pearl Bailey Bellson, and, when the conditions seem right, he still enjoys working now and then as a sideman. The present album was made under none of those conditions. The taping took place during a brief European tour in late April and early May of 1989, for which Louie headed a specially assembled quintet. The extraordinary talent for this group was drawn from four areas. From New York came Hank Jones, a pianist of rare skill with a background that goes back to the early bop days along 52nd Street. From Washington, D.C., there was Keter Betts, the full-toned bassist whose association with Ella Fitzgerald's backup trio goes back to the 1970s. Sharing the front line were Conte Candoli, whose trumpet illuminated groups led by Stan Kenton and Shelly Manne but who is best known to millions as a member of the Doc Severinsen "Tonight Show" band; Buddy DeFranco, for decades the preeminent virtuoso of the clarinet, who tours the world (often with Terry Gibbs) but lives in Florida; and the tenor sax virtuoso Don Menza, long a stalwart of the Los Angeles scene but recently residing in Las Vegas, where he has been a teacher at UNLV.