Veteran tenor saxophonist Dick Hafer's sudden emergence as a brilliant soloist on his Fresh Sound recording is a very welcome event. A reliable musician for the previous 40 years (mostly as a section player in big bands), Hafer heads a quartet (with pianist
Ross Tompkins, bassist
Dave Carpenter, and drummer
Jake Hanna) and displays his own wonderful tenor sound, which not only looks toward
Lester Young of the 1930s but
Prez of the '50s. Hafer is quite creative within
Young's style (not merely copying
Prez) and swings hard on ten swing standards and a song apiece by
Al Cohn and
Zoot Sims. It's a wonderful outing of melodic mainstream music by an often overlooked tenor master. ~ Scott Yanow