Dick Morrissey Jazz For Moderns (RSD 2017)

• 1. Down Home
• 2. Love For Sale
• 3. I Married An Angel (Take One)
• 4. Landslide
• 5. I Married An Angel (Take Two)
• 6. Announcements
• 7. Down Home (Take One)
• 8. Minor Incident
• 9. The Gypsy
• 10. Bang (Take One)
• 11. Bang (Take Two)
• 12. Down Home (Take Two)
• 13. Announcements

Taped for the series Jazz For Moderns, the previously unreleased sessions heard on this new album are especially valuable. If Morrissey’s début album showed him to be a logical successor to Hayes, then these follow-up sessions provide a much stronger case for the younger man’s own, if anything even more soulful, individuality. Throughout this record, there is a wonderful, almost tangible, sense of a band enjoying its work, something which in the stone-faced world of British modern jazz wasn’t always apparent. This infectious enthusiasm stemmed directly from the leader - “always jumping from foot to foot, urging his side-men on with whoops of glee” as Jazz Journal put it. Classic British modern jazz albums are rare beasts, owing to all sorts of factors, many of which are nothing whatsoever to do with those performing on them. This new release, capturing the era in which London produced its own take on the jazz trends of the day, is a valuable addition to that select catalogue. Not only does it showcase four of the UK’s best bop-apprenticed jazz talents in top form, all of them alas long gone, it provides moods and grooves that remain strong enough to catch a new generation of listeners. Simon Spillett.