For a quiet, contemplative lights out evening in the Monastery...

The Red Garland Quintet recorded in Hackensack, NJ November 15, 1957.

For a quiet, contemplative lights out evening in the Monastery...

From the liner notes:

Weinstock asked me to play some slow blues," Red recalls, "and this theme popped into my mind. In part, it's from Floyd's Guitar Blues, the number guitarist Floyd Smith used to play with Andy Kirk." Red plays the blues with an unselfconsicious naturalness that again reminds me of the poised confidence of the best swing era pianists. There's no grunting or pounding the blues into soul-for-sale music. This is simply unpretentious blues, the common jazz language, carried on through the decades by thousands of players. Note too Red's Wilson-like gentleness of touch which is, however, also firm and which articulates each note with a ringing clarity. Red gets a "sound" from the piano that's refreshingly and thoroughly pianistic. He's not one of the drummer pianists.

Red receives relaxed support from Arthur Taylor and George Joyner throughout the long (ruminative) blues. "I'd worked a lot with Art, and have felt for a long time that he's one of the steadiest and most swinging of drummers. George Joyner was rather new to me at that date, but he fitted in very naturally." John Coltrane takes the first solo and blows with direct, strongly emotional power. His intriguingly structured variations indicate how freshly he approaches even a simple theme. To Coltrane, everything is a challenge. And always, as has been noted. there is a demandingly communicative "cry" in Coltrane's playing.

Donald Byrd is one young modernist who didn't allow early attention from the critics to push him into megalomania. Since coming to New York, he has continued studying, both at the Manhattan School and in a wide variety of playing experiences. His work, as in this opening blues, has grown in strength and decisiveness from the fluent "humming-bird" quality that characterized him during his early months in New York.