Uptempo Blues – 1964
Brother Jack McDuff Quartet
The organist’s greatest band
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Jack McDuff was one of the top jazz organists of the 1960s, building upon the Jimmy Smith tradition and coming up with his own sound and style in the worlds of hard bop and soul jazz.
McDuff led his finest group in the mid-1960s, a quartet with tenor-saxophonist Red Holloway, guitarist George Benson (who was then in his early twenties) and drummer Joe Dukes.
This rare film captures the quartet at a 1964 concert in France, ripping through an uptempo blues, a piece with an arrangement that features all four musicians taking breaks and explosive solos at the rapid tempo.
The last two minutes are particularly memorable.
-Scott Yanow
Ella Fitzgerald