Zoot Sims - Getting Sentimental (2001)

This 1974 album was the first of six quartet sessions Zoot Sims recorded with pianist Jimmy Rowles between 1974 and 1983, and it's the only one not on Pablo Records. The album was originally released on Choice Records under the title "Zoot Sims' Party" with very low-budget album cover art. Bob Cranshaw plays electric bass and Micky Roker plays drums.
The album was recorded in the living room of jazz fan Gerry MacDonald's Sea Cliff, Long Island home. Though the liner notes state that the piano had been tuned the previous day, they also acknowledge that by the time of the session, the piano had some tuning issues. (If you are a jazz fan, you've probably heard records with pianos sounding much worse than this, but this piano's sound was not at the level you would have found in a professional NYC recording studio.)
All that is to say that the album is sonically acceptable, but not at the level of quality Norman Grantz achieved working with Sims and Rowles (and an acoustic bass player, usually George Mraz) in the RCA studios, the studio he liked to record Sims in. "Getting Sentimental" sounds somewhat like a 1970s club gig recorded without an audience.
As on most of his quartet albums during the period, Sims brings his soprano saxophone along with his tenor, in this case playing the smaller horn on "Caravan" and "The Very Thought of You". The group plays a wonderful arrangement of Cole Porter's "Dream Dancing" here, and it was successful enough that Sims used a version recorded for Pablo in 1978 as the opener for the "Warm Tenor" album.
Speaking of "Warm Tenor," that album and "If I'm Lucky" are the two albums to start with if you like the Sims/Rowles quartet. However, the other three done for Pablo ("For Lady Day", "I Wish I Were Twins", and "Suddenly It's Spring") are not very far behind...all are among Sims' very best studio work from any time during his long career. One more Sims quartet album from this era worth mentioning is "The Innocent Years", where Sims' regular pianist at the time, Richard Wyands, filled in for Jimmy Rowles in the studio. Though Sims and Rowles had a special musical connection, "The Innocent Years" gets an honorable mention, and is probably a better album than "Getting Sentimental". "Getting Sentimental" is the least essential of all of the quartet albums recorded by Sims in the last decade of his life, but it points the way to a very fruitful period in his recording career.