Home

Biographical
Sketch

Discography

Photos

Quotes

Frequently-Asked
Questions

Other Resources

News

Dave Burns: Warming Up

LP: Vanguard VRS-9143

This recording was recently reissued by Vanguard (LP only).

Personnel
Dave Burns (tp); Billy Mitchell (ts); Al Grey (tb); Harold Mabern (p); Bobby Hutcherson (vib); Herman Wright (b); Otis "Candy" Finch (d); Willie Corea (tymboli)

Recording Date & Location
Recording date and location unknown; released 1962

Commentary
Trumpeter Dave Burns second album for Vanguard, Warming Up!, was reissued a few years ago. Strangely, it was issued in the LP format only; no CD. That's fine for me, since I still spin vinyl, but I know that there are many who have given up on the format. I guess their ideas was to target the audiophile crowd who still swear that the big black platters sound best. (This audio fidelity of this album is fine indeed, even on my cheap little 'table.)

As for the music, it is very good too. It's assured, swinging jazz. Burns is a high-flying trumpeter who had worked with Duke Ellington, James Moody, and Dizzy Gillespie's Big Band before joining the Al Grey-Billy Mitchell Sextet. (You can definitely hear Dizzy's influence.) The arrangements by Melba Liston and Ralph Burns are interesting. At times, the group's ensemble work almost makes them sound as if they're a big band. To my ears, the best track on the album is Liston's "Now Ain't It," a tune that hearkens back to jazz's early days of speech-inflected solos. Everyone plays nicely including Hutcherson, but top honors go to Grey, whose work elicits grunts of approval from his band-mates.

A question: What's the relationship between Harold Mabern's composition "Richie's Dilemma" recorded here and Richie Powell's "George's Dilemma," which Hutcherson recorded with Ron Jefferson on the album Love Lifted Me? I wonder if it's a salute on Mabern's part to Powell, who had died in the same 1956 auto accident that killed Clifford Brown. If you know, give me a shout, and I'll update the page.