Kenny Drew x Keys

Despite performing with a variety of high profile date leaders, there’re a number of folks – ostensibly side men – who weren’t ever able to attain enough name recognition as to rank amongst the better known jazzbos of the bop era.

That kind of notoriety, of course, doesn’t really have too much to do with talent or a player’s ability to get over on a recording or during a live set. Further complicating matters, for some at least, was the fact that during the ‘50s and ‘60s black folks figured out that Europe was a more hospitable place to live and perform. So, any sort of career revelations that one had on the continent past by most of the American jazz audience.

Kenny Drew, a pianist who performed with Charlie Parker and even contributed to John Coltrane’s Blue Train recording, headed out to Copenhagen – a destination that Ornette Coleman and a variety of others found hospitable. Once there Drew led a number of groups over seas that were met with a positive response.

Before Drew split the States and headed across the Atlantic, though, he was able to helm a few sets that didn’t receive their due. Being re-issued, though, Drew’s work has been granted a modicum of success. Most notably, his 1960 date entitled Undercurrent has found a second wind since its 2007 reissue.

Sporting the line up that it does – Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Hank Mobley on sax, Sam Jones on bass and Louis Hayes on drums – Undercurrent should immediately be perceived as an impressive assemblage of bop talent. What’s interesting, though, is that the horn players in addition to Drew were all at the beginning – relatively – of their careers. Despite that – or even because of it – the Drew led ensemble runs through some of the more exciting, if not still rather traditional, bop of the era. There’s not really any hint of the group getting free, but that wasn’t the point. They all just wanted to rev up a good blues based jazz.

The title track features something of a novelty as Drew goes into his last solo, though. As his right hand tinkles away some run of notes, his left hand keeps rhythm by bouncing back and forth between notes in an endless warble. It’s not Thelonious Monk, but nothing is. Regardless of that fact, though, Drew arrives on this disc sounding like some advanced bop player.

Elsewhere, as on “Groovin’ the Blues” Drew and company summon some early Coltrane sessions in a staid manner, delivering laid back and slow blues. As before, each player gets a solo with Mobley’s being the knottiest. Even with that, Hubbard’s feature comes off as something almost too personal to make an appearance on recording. It begins with blurps and gurgles prior to getting into Miles Davis’ blues territory. There’s a reason that both of these horn players would go on to relative fame: it’s found here.

Undercurrent might be the most impressive Kenny Drew date, but there are surely a number of other outings from the same time period that should be a bit more fulfilling.