The Riverside Records Story is essentially
Orrin Keepnews' baby -- and why not, for the grizzled jazz producer/journalist co-founded the label, ran it from day one in 1952 until it suddenly went bankrupt in 1964, and produced almost all of the original sessions. Riverside's current custodians at Fantasy had
Keepnews select and sequence four CDs' worth of the label's output, which over the span of less than nine years made a big splash in the cloistered world of hard bop.
Keepnews also writes a voluminous set of notes that settles old scores, crows about What Went Right, offers often self-deprecating analyses of What Went Wrong, and generally keeps the reader riveted to the pages. The box is loosely organized around four topics instead of the usual chronological rundown; indeed, the earliest track,
Randy Weston's "Zulu," comes last. And
Keepnews devotes lots of time to four major figures whose extensive recordings for Riverside form the cornerstones of their reputations:
Cannonball Adderley,
Bill Evans,
Thelonious Monk, and
Wes Montgomery. There are some imaginative sequences that give the collection extra star power -- like
Monk performing his standards with
Coleman Hawkins,
John Coltrane,
Gerry Mulligan, and
Clark Terry, respectively -- and there is a welcome touch of the bizarre, too, like
Philly Joe Jones' hammy "Blues for Dracula." Moreover, gratefully defying some of his holier-than-thou pronouncements elsewhere,
Keepnews does not shy away from his own ventures into the commercial sphere, including
Montgomery with strings on "Tune Up,"
Charlie Byrd likewise on "Meditation,"
Mongo Santamaria's Top Ten hit "Watermelon Man," and some soul-jazz singles. The first two discs by and large are consistently strong, while some of the lesser tracks on the remaining discs may be there more to represent the artist than to thrill the listener. ~ Richard S. Ginell