Don Fagerquist - Portrait of a Great Jazz Artist (2005)

Marginalized as a result of his limited recorded output -- just one LP as a leader, the excellent Music to Fill a Void -- trumpeter Don Fagerquist remains ripe for rediscovery: a surefooted and expressive trumpeter, his cool, nuanced tones capture the essence of West Coast jazz. Portrait of a Great Jazz Artist is an exemplary introduction to Fagerquist's music, cherry-picking his finest solos from a series of dates spanning from 1955 to 1959 in support of Les Brown, Russ Garcia, and others. Aided and abetted by sidemen including Herb Geller and Zoot Sims, Fagerquist exhibits a stunningly imaginative melodic ability, creating a seemingly contradictory sound that's soft and mellow but boasts diamond-sharp edges.


Tracks:

1 Autumn Serenade (DeRose, Gallop) 5:56
2 Fedj (Pollard) 3:44
3 Almost Like Being in Love (Lerner, Loewe) 3:17
4 The Way You Look Tonight (Fields, Kern) 3:28
5 Love Is Just Around the Corner (Gensler, Robin) 3:33
6 The Man I Love (Gershwin, Gershwin) 3:18
7 Worry-Go-Round (Garcia) 2:42
8 The Boy Next Door (Blane, Martin) 3:31
9 I'm Glad There's You (Dorsey, Madeira) 4:08
10 Body and Soul (Green, Heyman, Sour) 4:16
11 Out of Nowhere (Green, Heyman) 2:56
12 Coquette (Green, Kahn, Lombardo) 3:05
13 You're Looking at Me (Troup) 3:08
14 Time After Time (Cahn, Styne) 2:48
15 Aren't You Glad You're You ? (Burke, VanHeusen) 3:26
16 Love Is Here to Stay (Gershwin, Gershwin) 3:38
17 I Remember You (Mercer, Schertzinger) 2:23

Personnel:

Feat. Don Fagerquist, Howard Roberts, Terry Pollard, Herman Wright, Zoot Sims, Dave Pell, Bill Holman, Bob Gordon, Buddy Clark, Marty Paich, Herb Geller, Max Bennett, Alvin Stoller, Fred Katz, Bob Enevoldsen, Don Heath, Russell Garcia, Jack Sperling, Buddy Collette, Al Viola, Mel Lewis, Al Aaron, Bob Berteaux, etc...

Recorded between January 10, 1955 & May 29, 1959 ; Hollywood, California