Gene Harris

Babe's Blues sat in the Blue Note vault for over twenty-five years before its 1988 release. Recorded across two sessions in 1961 and 1962 at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs, these are prime Three Sounds performances that could have appeared on any of the group's classic early albums. The playing has the same relaxed authority, the same blues-soaked groove, the same effortless swing that made the trio one of Blue Note's most reliable acts.

Why Alfred Lion shelved these sessions is anyone's guess. The material is strong, the performances are polished, and the Van Gelder sound is as warm and present as on any Three Sounds record from the same period. Harris plays with the quiet confidence of a man who knows exactly what his trio can do, and Simpkins and Dowdy respond with the telepathic precision that only comes from years of playing together.

For completists, Babe's Blues fills a gap in the catalog. For newcomers, it is as good an introduction to the Three Sounds as any of the original releases. The title track is a slow blues that shows Harris at his most tender, and the uptempo numbers swing with the kind of easy groove that no amount of studio polish can fake.

Recorded live at the It Club in Los Angeles in March 1970 but not released until 1996, this is the missing link between the classic Three Sounds and Harris's 1970s Blue Note solo records. The lineup has changed: Henry Franklin replaces Andrew Simpkins on bass and Carl Burnett takes over from Bill Dowdy on drums. The sound has changed too. This is a funkier, harder-edged trio than the original Three Sounds, reflecting the musical shifts of the late 1960s.

Harris is on fire throughout. The live setting frees him from the studio's restraint, and he hammers out extended blues workouts that build to ecstatic peaks. Franklin's bass is electric and punchy, adding a bottom-end weight that Simpkins's acoustic bass never provided. Burnett drives the group with a funk-influenced approach that pushes Harris into territory he rarely explored on record.

Several tracks were written by producer Monk Higgins, and they bring a soul-jazz flavor that suits the band perfectly. The recording quality captures the room's energy without losing the piano's detail. Live at the It Club is one of the great lost Blue Note recordings, a document of a band caught at the exact moment of transformation. That it took twenty-six years to reach listeners is a crime.

Released eight years after the performance and six years after Harris's death, Live in London captures a quartet that existed only in the UK. Jim Mullen on guitar, Andrew Cleyndert on bass, and Martin Drew on drums were Harris's London rhythm section, musicians he played with exclusively during his British engagements. The Pizza Express Jazz Club in Soho provided an intimate room, and the recording captures every detail.

Mullen is a revelation. His warm, bluesy guitar tone is different from Ron Eschete's cleaner sound, and the interplay between piano and guitar has a looser, more exploratory quality than the Concord studio dates. Cleyndert and Drew are world-class players: Drew spent years with Oscar Peterson and brings that same big-eared, dynamic sensitivity to Harris's music.

The program includes tunes Harris rarely recorded elsewhere, and the unfamiliar material seems to energize him. His playing is relaxed but engaged, the blues vocabulary intact but applied to fresh contexts. Live in London is not essential in the way the Concord highlights are, but it offers a valuable alternate view of Harris in his final years, surrounded by sympathetic musicians who drew something different out of him.

The second volume of material from the same May 1996 Pizza Express engagement, released two years after Live in London. Another Night in London draws from the same well but offers a slightly different selection of tunes. The playing is equally strong, which makes sense: these are performances from the same run of nights, with the same quartet in the same room.

If anything, the second volume leans more heavily toward blues and medium-tempo swingers, which plays to Harris's strengths. Mullen's guitar is more prominent in the mix on several tracks, and his solo work is consistently excellent. Drew's brushwork on the ballads is a master class in restraint and sensitivity.

The question with any second volume is whether it justifies its existence, and Another Night in London does. The performances are not retreads of the first album's material, and the quartet's rapport is, if anything, even more relaxed. For anyone who enjoyed Live in London, this is a natural companion. For everyone else, start with the first volume and come here if it resonates.

Groovin' Hard is a treasure. Compiled from radio broadcast tapes recorded by Seattle DJ Jim Wilke between 1964 and 1968 at the Penthouse jazz club, these are the Three Sounds in their natural habitat: live, loose, and playing for a crowd that came to hear them swing. The recordings span four separate engagements over five years, documenting the trio's evolution as Bill Dowdy was replaced first by Kalil Madi and then by Carl Burnett.

The live setting makes all the difference. Studio Three Sounds records were always polished and professional, but the Penthouse recordings reveal a rawer, more extroverted band. Harris stretches his solos, takes more chances, and plays with a physical intensity that the studio dates rarely captured. Simpkins walks bass lines that are deeper and more rhythmically adventurous than anything on the Blue Note records.

The audio quality varies across the sessions, as you would expect from radio broadcast tapes recorded over four years, but the best tracks sound remarkably good. Resonance's production includes a 28-page booklet with context from Wilke and producer Zev Feldman. Groovin' Hard is the most important posthumous Gene Harris release, proof that the Three Sounds were a far more exciting live band than their studio catalog suggested.

Blues n' Ballads compiles fifteen tracks drawn from Resonance's three previous Gene Harris releases: nine from the two Live in London volumes and six from Groovin' Hard. As a best-of compilation, it serves a useful purpose for listeners who want a single disc that surveys Harris across three decades and two continents. As a standalone release, it offers nothing that the source albums do not already contain.

The sequencing juxtaposes the 1960s Three Sounds recordings with the 1996 London quartet material, which highlights both continuity and change. Harris's blues vocabulary remained remarkably consistent across thirty years, but the London quartet's sound is warmer and more polished than the Penthouse recordings' raw energy. Hearing them side by side reinforces how deeply the blues ran through everything Harris played.

For anyone who already owns the three source albums, Blues n' Ballads is redundant. For newcomers to the Resonance catalog, it is a convenient entry point that covers a lot of ground in a single disc. The rating reflects its status as a compilation rather than any shortcoming in the performances, which are uniformly excellent.