Willis Jackson With Pat Martino - Willis...With Pat (1978)

01.Bolita

02.Single Action

03.Blue Velvet

04.Miss Ann

05.Gator Whale

06.My One and Only Love

07.The Breeze and I

08.The Goose Is Loose.

Willis Jackson (tenor saxophone)

Pat Martino (guitar)

Mickey Tucker (acoustic & electric piano, organ)

Charlie Earland, Carl Wilson (organ)

Bob Cranshaw, Jimmy Lewis (bass)

Freddie Waits, Idris Muhammad, Yusef Ali (drums)

Ralph Dorsey, Sonny Morgan (percussion)

Richard Landrum, Buddy Caldwell (congas).

Recorded between May 16, 1974 and April 26, 1978.

When Willis Jackson and Pat Martino got together in the 1960s and the 1970s, the improvisers usually had a very strong rapport. Released in 1998, this collection gathers some of their work for Muse in the 1970s and draws on three albums: Headed and Gutted (1974), Bar Wars (1977), and Single Action (1978). Painting a well-rounded picture of Jackson's work with Martino, With Pat Martino ranges from exhilarating, high-speed bop burners like "The Goose Is Loose" and "Single Action" to the slow blues of "Bolita" and "Miss Ann," to soulful ballad statements such as "My One and Only Love" and Bobby Vinton's "Blue Velvet" (which hasn't received a lot of attention from the jazz world but works impressively well as a jazz ballad). Jackson had calmed down since his honker sessions of the late 1940s and early '50s, but he still had a very big, fat tone and a lot of energy -- no one's going to mistake With Pat Martino for cool jazz. The material on this CD isn't very ambitious, but it's certainly heartfelt and rewarding. ~ Alex Henderson.