Fumio Nanri

The debut Columbia session and still the essential Nanri record: traditional jazz played with such concentrated conviction that the question of whether the music is dated never arises. Nanri was already a legend of the Osaka jazz scene by 1970, and this recording catches him at the height of his powers with Toshiyuki Miyama's New Herd big band providing a full-bodied backdrop for his trumpet and vocals.

The title track is the cornerstone of the session: Nanri's open trumpet tone has a directness that the great New Orleans players would have recognized, warm without being soft, swinging without being aggressive. His vocal on the track carries the same quality: unaffected, rhythmically secure, deeply rooted in the tradition he is drawing from.

The big band arrangements give Nanri's solos a rich orchestral frame, and the interplay between the trumpet and the ensemble sections has the kind of buoyant support that makes traditional jazz feel inevitable rather than effortful. Eleven tracks of American standards filtered through the sensibility of a musician who had spent thirty years making this music his own.

A collaboration between Nanri and the great popular composer Ryoichi Hattori, Ame No Blues pairs the trumpeter once more with the Miyama New Herd big band, now augmented by the Columbia Orchestra. The title track, "Rain Blues," is one of the finest compositions in Nanri's recorded catalogue: a song that sits naturally at the intersection of Japanese popular melody and American blues form, carried by a trumpet vocal that sounds simultaneously homesick and at home.

The twelve tracks range across moods and tempos, but the collaboration with Hattori gives the record a compositional richness that the standards-based debut did not attempt. Where St. Louis Blues drew its power from Nanri's interpretive authority over American material, Ame No Blues reaches for something more particular: a Japanese voice speaking through American jazz vocabulary.

The big band arrangements have a warmth and fullness that suit Nanri's broad trumpet sound, and the orchestral additions never overwhelm the jazz core of the performances. Alongside St. Louis Blues, this is the twin peak of Nanri's recorded output.

The first record on the Express label and the first to place Nanri in a small-group setting with named personnel. The contrast with the two Columbia big band records is immediate: stripped of orchestral cushion, Nanri's trumpet is more exposed, more personal, and the blues feeling that always ran through his playing comes fully to the surface.

Norio Maeda's piano and arrangements give the ten tracks a focused, bluesy cohesion, and the rhythm section of Harada, Ishikawa, and Yokouchi provides a looser, more interactive backdrop than the big bands allowed. The repertoire draws from the same American standard songbook that Nanri always favored, but the smaller group context gives each tune more room to breathe.

Not quite the emotional weight of the two Columbia sessions, but essential for understanding the range of Nanri's art. The small-group format reveals aspects of his playing that the big band settings naturally obscured: the way he shapes a phrase, the subtlety of his dynamics, the conversational quality of his approach to a melody.

The title translates roughly as "Trumpet of Glory," and there is something fitting about the confidence it projects. This second Express release returns Nanri to the big band context of the Columbia sessions, reuniting him with the Miyama New Herd for twelve more tracks of the American standards and Dixieland repertoire that defined his performing life.

The playing has the ease of deep familiarity: these were not songs he learned but songs he lived in. Nanri's trumpet tone retains the warmth and directness of the Columbia recordings, with a lyrical quality to the ballad performances that rewards close listening. The New Herd provides the same kind of buoyant, full-bodied support that made the debut so convincing.

If it lacks the revelatory quality of the first two Columbia records, that is only because the ground had already been broken. Eikou No Trumpet consolidates rather than advances, but what it consolidates is a body of work that needs no further justification. Nanri completists will find it essential; those new to his work should start with St. Louis Blues and work forward.

Recorded in July 1974 and released in 1975 as a memorial following Nanri's death on August 4, 1975, Farewell is the final studio document and, by any measure, a masterpiece. The septet format is the most traditional ensemble setting of his recorded career: trumpet, trombone, clarinet, and a four-piece rhythm section playing New Orleans and Dixieland repertoire with the authority of musicians who had spent their lives in this music.

Eiji Kitamura's clarinet and Koichi Kawabe's trombone weave around Nanri's lead trumpet in the classic New Orleans frontline configuration, and the interplay among the three horns has a naturalness that studio recordings rarely capture. Yuzuru Sera's piano and the rhythm section of Harada and Takeuchi provide a steady, swinging foundation that never overwhelms the ensemble balance.

The ten tracks across the record have the feeling of a musician who knows exactly who he is and what he wants to say. There is no experimentation, no reaching for effect, no performance anxiety. Just Fumio Nanri playing the music he loved best with musicians who understood it as deeply as he did. As a closing statement, Farewell achieves what the best endings do: it makes everything that preceded it feel complete.