Song:Edison Lights
Album:In A Mellow Tone
In the early days of Concord Records, Carl Jefferson liked to feature the same musicians with different partners. That's why you see guitarist Herb Ellis record with everyone on the roster. He was very versatile. In this case, he is recording with legendary bassist Ray Brown. Of course both guys were in Oscar Peterson's late 50s band. They recorded two albums in the mid-70s. Edison Lights is from the 1974 album Soft Shoe which is the first of the two albums. Harry "Sweets" Edison plays trumpet and he also wrote Edison Lights. The rest of the band is George Duke on piano and Jake Hanna on drums. Duke might seem like an odd choice because he played with Frank Zappa at the time. But he was a jazz musician first. Hanna was mainly a sideman who was the drummer in The Merv Griffin Show band. Hanna was on a lot of Concord recordings. Ellis & Brown followed this with the 1976 album Hot Tracks with Edison, Hanna, Plas Johnson on sax and Mike Melvoin on keyboards. Soft Shoe is out of print. But you can get Edison Lights on this 2CD comp of Ellis' Concord recordings from the British label Recall. It's a good intro to Ellis' music. In the 80s Ellis and Brown were in a trio with pianist Monty Alexander. The quality of the music shows how versatile both of these jazz legends were. They could play anything with anybody. Here's a video for Edison Lights by Herb Ellis & Ray Brown.
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