Hamiet Bluiett

Sankofa / Rear Garde is a quartet record by baritone saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett, made in New York in October 1992 for Soul Note with guitarist Ted Dunbar, bassist Clint Houston and drummer Ben Riley. Bluiett, born in Brooklyn, Illinois, in 1940, was a founding member of the Black Artists Group in St. Louis in 1967, moved to New York in 1969 and joined Charles Mingus in 1974. A New Orleans concert in late 1976 with Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake and David Murray led a few months later to the World Saxophone Quartet. Both of those chapters are present here, in the choice of the pieces that are not his own.

The session was recorded on October 2 and 3, 1992 at Sear Sound, with Jon Rosenberg engineering, Flavio Bonandrini producing and Gennaro Carone mastering. Bluiett plays baritone saxophone and alto clarinet. He wrote seven of the eleven pieces. The other four are Diane by his old employer Mingus, "C" by his World Saxophone Quartet colleague Hemphill, Black Vibrations by Houston and Hang In There by Dunbar, which closes the record. John, the longest track at about nine minutes, opens it, followed by the short title piece. Elsewhere come Daddy Banks / Grandaddy Song, a brief Sunrise / Sunset under two minutes, and Some Other Line / Baker, which the sleeve dedicates to Everett Baker.

This is the Soul Note CD, catalogue number 121238-2, first released in 1993.