The Bee Hive Session - Unissued Tunes, Vol. One

On that day when I yearly mark the passage of time, I received this morning a nice little gift from our old friend deGallo. A peak at these covers should have all of you salivating already. Add to this the anticipation of one our friend's perfect rips, and I have to question why you are still reading this instead of getting to the link. Should some of you require yet further prodding, here is what AMG had to say:

"The Bee Hive label was founded by Jim Neumann in Chicago in 1977 and stayed around for about six years. While based in Chicago, most of their players were based in New York City and virtually all the albums were recorded there. There weren't that many albums released, 16 including this one (with red vinyl). But what was lacking in quantity, was made up in quality. Top ranked jazz artists cut albums for this recording company, some of them are represented on this compilation of takes which didn't make it to a regular album. To the label's credit, they gave their artists lots of time to fully work out their approach to the music. The average playing time per tune is about seven minutes.

Why these tracks never made it to a customary release is puzzling, given the high level of artistic execution. Nick Brignola playing alto instead of baritone combines with Pepper Adams on an authoritative version of "Stablemates" for one. Sal Salvador and Eddie Bert uniting with the now baritone sax playing Brignola on an in depth probe of "On Green Dolphin Street" for another. Then there's the pièce de résistance, the master ballad singer Johnny Hartman's treatment of "Moonlight in Vermont" alone with the guitar of Al Gafa. This album should be remastered for CD just for this performance. It would be a good project for an enterprising and caring record company to gather all the Bee Hive albums and release them on CDs. Depriving jazz lovers of this music is criminal."

Now please DO remember to leave some love for our pal deGallo for this jewel.