Arthur Blythe: Lenox Avenue Breakdown

One of the last jazzers to receive the start treatment at Columbia records before the neocons took over in the early `80's, altoist Arthur Blythe made a series of fine records that covered the distance between his loft jazz roots and the pop tastes of the time. "Lenox Avenue Breakdown" combined Blythe's singularly soulful delivery with a mix that seems more suited to now than then, with drummer Jack DeJohnette dispensing calypsofied thundering all over the alto-tuba-flute front line while guitar harmolodicist James "Blood" Ulmer ker-changs in all the oddest spaces. It's dense rocking postbop at its best.

-K. Leander Williams