Joe Newman - The Complete Swingville Sessions (2012)

These Joe Newman Swingville sessions, an object lesson in relaxed and intelligent blowing, are among the happiest recorded by the trumpeter. All the elements fit compatible musicians, familiar material, congenial atmosphere dovetailed into a deceptively simple and always swinging whole.

The potential of a two-horn front line has rarely been exploited as brilliantly as it is here by Newman with Wess or Foster. The three Basie-ites are in top form, playing with more imagination and vitality than in most similar dates. Tommy Flanagan, present in all tracks, is a constant delight, sensitive, forceful when necessary, always sympathetic to the soloist, an essential part of the ideal rhythm sections employed. And the quartet session is a model of complete relaxation and how to assimilate individual expression into a collective wholein itself an ideal summation of what Joe Newman achieved on these dates.