AMG Review of Giant Bones '80

Ken Dryden
All Music Guide

After a successful partnership with J.J. Johnson during the 1950s (with a few more meetings in the 1960s), it's not surprising that Kai Winding enjoyed hooking up with another trombonist from time to time. This meeting with Curtis Fuller, made for Sonet in 1979, rekindles the magic Winding experienced with Johnson, even with different material and musicians (Horace Parlan, Mads Vinding, and Ed Thigpen). The opener, "Love 4 Rent," is Winding's barely disguised reworking of Cole Porter's "Love for Sale," but the hot blowing by both horn players gets the album off to a fast start. The unison lines by Winding and Fuller in the delicious take of "Scrapple from the Apple" are precise. Fuller's warm arrangement of "Never Never Land" is wistful and mellow. One oddity is that the label unfortunately re-sequenced the album after Mike Hennessey completed his excellent liner notes, so his description of the order of songs is badly out of whack. This English LP is well worth acquiring.