Art Farmer, Clifford Jordan

You Make Me Smile is a quintet date led by flugelhornist Art Farmer with tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan, recorded at Classic Sound Studio in New York on December 13 and 15, 1984 and released by Soul Note in 1985. Farmer, who had moved to Europe and settled in Vienna, had been recording for the label for a few years, and this is the second of his Soul Note albums with Jordan, pianist Fred Hersch and drummer Akira Tana, after Mirage in 1982.

On Mirage the bassist had been Ray Drummond; here it is Rufus Reid, who also wrote the title track that opens the record. Farmer produced the session himself, with Hersch credited as recording coordinator, A.T. Michael MacDonald as engineer and Giovanni Bonandrini as executive producer. The choice of material mixes standards with less familiar pieces. Next to Reid's piece there is an adaptation of Scriabin's Prelude No. 1, seven minutes long, and Farmer's own Flashback, the longest track at almost eight minutes. Benny Carter's Souvenir is a ballad feature, Nostalgia comes from the bebop of Fats Navarro and Tadd Dameron, and Rodgers and Hart's Have You Met Miss Jones? closes the album at under five minutes. Mirage had been cut at Vanguard Studios in New York in September 1982, so the two albums catch the same front line and pianist two years apart.

This is the Soul Note CD 121076-2, with the album first released in 1985 as SN 1076.