Art Pepper

The canonical Pepper record. One morning in January 1957, with Miles Davis's rhythm section of Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones in town, Pepper walked in unrehearsed and cut a masterpiece. West Coast meets East Coast, and nobody loses.

Pepper fronting a twelve-piece band on Marty Paich arrangements of bebop and cool classics: Move, Groovin' High, Anthropology, 'Round Midnight. The best big-band showcase any West Coast altoist ever got, and he plays tenor and clarinet too.

The sequel to Meets the Rhythm Section, with another Miles Davis unit: Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, and Jimmy Cobb, plus Conte Candoli on trumpet for part of the date. Pepper digs into harder bop territory and sounds completely at home.

Quartet sides with Russ Freeman at the piano, cut for the short-lived Intro label. The ballad playing here, especially Summertime and Blues In, shows the lyrical side of Pepper's alto that made the West Coast sound worth arguing about.

Recorded in late 1960, released in 1963 while Pepper was in prison. A standards date with Dolo Coker, Jimmy Bond, and Frank Butler that lives up to its title: the last studio statement before the long silence, and one of the rawest things he ever cut.

The return. After fifteen years of prison, Synanon, and silence, Pepper came back with Hampton Hawes, Charlie Haden, and Shelly Manne, and made one of the most emotionally charged records in jazz. You can hear everything it cost him.

Elvin Jones behind the kit changes everything. George Cables begins his run as Pepper's most important late-career partner, and the polyrhythmic pressure from Coltrane's old drummer pushes Pepper into his most searching playing of the comeback.

The 1957 contrafact revisited twenty-two years later, with Tommy Flanagan, Red Mitchell, and Billy Higgins. The ten-minute Nature Boy and eleven-minute September Song are the heart of it. The single best entry point to the Galaxy years.

The strings album Pepper waited his whole career to make, with charts by Bill Holman and Jimmy Bond that frame the horn instead of drowning it. He even picks up the clarinet on Blues in the Night. Late-night listening of the highest order.