Jan Johansson: St. Louis Blues

Track

St. Louis Blues

Artist

Jan Johansson (piano)

CD

300.000 (Heptagon HECD-006)

Buy Track

Musicians:

Jan Johansson (piano).

Composed by W.C. Handy

.

Recorded: Stockholm, Sweden, July 8, 1968

Albumcoverjanjohansson-300-000

Rating: 93/100 (learn more)

Countless innovative recordings of this W.C. Handy staple exist, but this solo "test version" from a soundcheck is particularly thrilling for its freedom and motion. The exuberant spirit of blues meant something far different in the 1960s than when this song was originally composed by Handy in jazz's early days and first published in 1914. With his rendition, Jan Johansson, the Swedish giant of jazz, goes out on a limb and finds himself perfectly at home in a frontier of tone clusters, rhythmic displacements and jagged phrasing.

Reviewer: David Tenenholtz

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