Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis - The Prestige Collection: 1958 - 1961 (2017)

Among the main protagonists credited with linking the big band era with the soul jazz scene that emerged during the late 1950s, Eddie Lockjaw Davis remains a notable influence on jazz saxophonists to this day. While perhaps not always displaying the finesse of his contemporaries, Davis produced a tone that was wholly unique and capable of emitting an aggressive, bluesy sound alongside lines of great tenderness and sensitivity. The flexibility of his playing lent itself to rhythm and blues, swing, hard bop and Latin jazz over the years, and while his early career featured Davis supporting some of the finest artists of the period, his greatest records came when he took up the role of bandleader, notably during his tenancy with the Prestige label. This collection features the eight albums by Eddie Lockjaw Davis as leader released on the Prestige label between 1958 and 1961. Presented here with delightful, remastered audio and in their completion, the set includes over five hours of extraordinary music in total, and serves as the perfect introduction to this maestro s work, or as a welcome reminder of a musician whose enormous contributions to the jazz genre are, on occasion, criminally overlooked.