Blue Mitchell – Stablemates
This previously hard to find album was made in Hollywood two years before Mitchell's premature death from cancer on May 21 1979.
It is a worthy component of the Mitchell discographyand Blues playing here stacks up nicely against his best work of his classic Riverside and Blue Note periods.
Blue's front line partner in the accomplished band assembled for the date was his friend saxophonist Dick Spencer. The two knew each other well from time spent together in the Louie Bellson Band, where Dick was lead alto. The piano chair went to Victor Feldman. John Heard, a veteran of associations with everyone from Booker Ervin to Oscar Peterson via Count Basie was well known for his melodic, rhytmitically pulsating patterns.
The last of the Stablemates, providing the drive and subtlety of the percussion department was drummer Dick Berk - another established practitioner on the West Coast scene after career associations ranging from Mingus, Walter Bishop and Freddie Hubbard to Cal Tjader, Phineas Newborn and Jean-Luc Ponty.
6 Tracks. Recorded at Sage and Sound Studio, Hollywood, California, 28th / 29th April 1977.
Tracklisting:
1. Stablemates (6:01)
2. Portrait Of Jennie (7:40)
3. There Will Never Be Another You (7:06)
4. Getting Sentimental Over Blue (7:00)
5. I Can’t Get Started (8:36)
6 Ow! (6:17)