If I'm Lucky

Artist: Zoot Sims with Jimmy Rowles
Label: Ojc
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1

UPC: 025218668323
EAN: 0025218668323
ASIN: B000000YW9

Release Date: 1992-02-17

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Listmania:

Zoot Sims: His Best
Unsung Jazz Records
Some underrated contemporary jazz pianists
Zoot Sims and Jimmy Rowles Together

Tracks:

(I Wonder) Where Our Love Has Gone
Legs
If I'm Lucky
Shadow Waltz
You're My Everything
It's All Right With Me
Gypsy Sweetheart
I Hear A Rhapsody

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For Lady Day
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I Wish I Were Twins

Customer Reviews:

A classic.......2006-11-16

This is music that satisfies the ear, that takes you away (for awhile) from this bad news saturated world.

soulful.......2005-10-20

I Wonder Where Our Love Has Gone is remarkable, for its restraint, and for its powerful emotional statement. Rowles on piano sets up the tune in a quiet and wistful way, and then Zoot enters building up to a climax of surprising force . . . all in an understated but irresistible manner. It's a tribute to the musicians, who can make such a brilliant performance seem so effortless. One of my favorite Zoot Sims tunes.

Classic mainstream jazz.......2001-02-11

Norman Granz, after founding Verve in the 1940s, later returned to the record-making business with his Pablo label; this was a smaller, less adventurous affair, as befitted a time (the 1970s) when the audience for conventional mainstream jazz had shrunk. Pablo was built around a small core of musicians who had often been with Granz during Verve's heyday--Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Joe Pass, &c. Unfortunately, most of the releases from the label tend to founder on Granz's unimaginative production, which usually involved putting the same handful of stars together in the studio in every possible combination; rarely were stars encouraged to experiment or try something fresh or risky.

But Zoot Sims' albums for the label provide a shining exception. This is partly because of the involvement of the great pianist Jimmy Rowles in many of them--he's a pro's pro, who like Roger Kellaway or Dave McKenna has a positive inability to take it easy. Rowles masterminded the band's repertoire, & his encyclopedic knowledge of tunes was a fine resource (as was his ability to intelligently arrange & reharmonize them). _If I'm Lucky_ is one of the best instances of their partnership, & one of my favourite mainstream jazz discs of recent decades. The essential drama of the music comes in the interplay between the eloquent but passionate tenor of Sims & the wily, unpredictable piano of Rowles. Sims's tone is greatly affecting--it might have the same Lestorian sources as Stan Getz, but it's less pretty & more plangent. The opening track, "I Wonder Where Our Love Has Gone", is immensely moving. But Sims can also piledrive through "It's Alright With Me", a reading that rivals Sonny Rollins' brilliant dissertation on it on _Worktime_. Rowles is a very different kind of player--sometimes rumbustious, as when he drops in a little stride or rumbles away in the bass; sometimes hard-swinging; sometimes delicate.

There's little more to be said: this is great jazz playing, with an appealingly melancholic edge to it.

Zoot and Jimmy never better.......1999-12-20

As a lover of Zoots playing since I'm a kid I can only say that this is the man at his most comfortable and swinging best. Jimmy Rowles, Mousey Alexander and George Mraz are perfect cats for the masters voice at its most beautiful.Zoot never felt the need to keep up with trends or"what was happening" he just knew how to swing,and thats what he did. Boy, do we miss him. Alan Satz

It does not get any better than this........1998-12-30

We are lucky to have had these two beautiful musicians grace our lives. Jazz music does not get any better than this. Essential to any Jazz collection. 10 stars!

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