condition (record/cover): NM / EX-

Insert and obi included.

Sweet Basil, New York, 1986: the surviving Five Spot rhythm section - Mal Waldron, Richard Davis, Ed Blackwell - reconvenes the sacred 1961 book with Donald Harrison and Terence Blanchard standing in the impossible shoes of Eric Dolphy and Booker Little. It works, and movingly: the young New Orleans horns honor without imitating, finding their own routes through "Fire Waltz" and the rest while the elders supply living memory rather than museum authority - Blackwell's dancing pulse in particular connecting 1961 and 1986 as if the intervening quarter century were a rumor. Hearing Waldron's great theme rise again over the rhythm team that premiered it is genuinely affecting, repertory jazz at its most legitimate: the actual keepers of the flame, relighting it in public, with witnesses.

Japanese Paddle Wheel release, from the King imprint that documented eighties New York with such consistent care. A beautiful late chapter to the Five Spot story, earned honestly.