Kenny Burrell

His Blue Note debut, the one Alfred Lion needed three attempts to get on tape. This playlist runs the expanded First Blue Note Sessions compilation rather than the original LP sequence, so it carries twenty-three tracks including the material Lion left in the vault.

An original 1958 mono pressing of BLP 1596, ripped from the vinyl. Volume 1 only, so it is half the session; the two volumes came out of a single day with Art Blakey, Tina Brooks, Louis Smith and Junior Cook, and the review covers both. Andy Warhol did the cover.

The live Blue Note date from the Five Spot with Tina Brooks, Roland Hanna, Ben Tucker and Art Blakey. This is the expanded edition, so it runs longer than the LP. Reviewed on the Blue Note Classics page rather than the Burrell era pages.

The co-led date with Tommy Flanagan, John Coltrane and Idrees Sulieman, filed under Coltrane's name on most uploads including this one. Note the playlist is a long channel mix that opens with the album, so it keeps going once the record ends.

Cut in March 1958 with Tommy Flanagan, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb, then held back five years and issued after Coltrane had become Coltrane. "Why Was I Born" is the duo track, just guitar and tenor, and it is the reason to hear this.

The trio night at the Village Vanguard with Richard Davis and Roy Haynes, recorded September 1959 and issued on Argo in 1960. No piano, no horn, and Burrell playing like a man with nothing to hide behind. He would come back to this room three more times.

The co-led date with Coleman Hawkins, one of the great late Hawkins performances and a reminder of how comfortably Burrell worked with players from the generation above him. Moodsville was Prestige's slow-and-quiet subsidiary and the brief suited them both.

The one everybody names first. One January afternoon with Stanley Turrentine, Major Holley, Bill English and Ray Barretto, no piano and no organ anywhere on it. "Chitlins con Carne" is the famous track and "Soul Lament" is the solo guitar piece at the center.

Gil Evans writing for a jazz orchestra around a single guitar, with Steve Lacy, Lee Konitz, Elvin Jones and Ron Carter in the cast. Three Grammy nominations and the record that proved Burrell could carry a concert-scale setting without raising his volume.

The summit of the Fantasy years, an all-star double album assembled after Ellington died in 1974, with Thad Jones, Joe Henderson, Jimmy Smith, Nat Adderley, Gary Bartz and Snooky Young. Burrell had been teaching Ellington's music for years by this point.