Plus Four cover

Plus Four

Released

This five-track, 32-minute album is secretly a Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet session, recorded in March 1956, only three months before Brown and pianist Richie Powell’s deaths. It was released under Rollins’ name for business reasons, and in fact it sounds different from the work they did on all their other records. It begins with a Rollins original, the waltz “Valse Hot,” and ends with another of his pieces, the burning “Pent-Up House.” In between are versions of three show tunes — “Kiss and Run,” “I Feel a Song Coming On,” and “Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep)” — each given a unique spin, as in the melodic trade-offs between trumpet and tenor sax on “Kiss and Run” or the romantic swing of “Count Your Blessings,” on which Brown steps away.

Phil Freeman

Suggestions
Live at the Union 1966 cover

Live at the Union 1966

Ian Carr, Don Rendell
This Is Our Music cover

This Is Our Music

The Ornette Coleman Quartet
Compass cover

Compass

Joshua Redman
Be Water cover

Be Water

Christian Sands
The Elements cover

The Elements

Joe Henderson, Alice Coltrane
Accent on the Blues cover

Accent on the Blues

Big John Patton
 Old and New Dreams cover

Old and New Dreams

Don Cherry, Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden, Ed Blackwell