THE ART OF LARRY YOUNG

This six CD set is a fairly thorough overview of Larry Young's seven years with Blue Note, with songs pulled not only from his own albums, but also from a few albums he recorded with Grant Green. Fortunately this collection leans towards his later years when he was starting to develop his modern abstract style that would make him an in-demand B3 player for the huge psychedelic jazz-rock explosion that would hit in the late 60s.

Early recordings on this box set show Larry still influenced by B3 jazz innovator Jimmy Smith's more traditional bluesy style, and some of the Grant Green dates have Larry and Grant playing then current pop tunes in a sort of lounge style, otherwise the rest of this collection centers around Young expanding his musical horizons and developing his unique voice on the Hammond organ. The different and subtle attempts to bring something new to jazz and the mixture of styles Young would work with are always interesting.

This is not traditional jazz, nor is it avant-garde, instead it is very adventurous and innovative post-hard bop that musically lies somewhere between The Miles Davis Quintet and Ornette Coleman's pre jazz-rock music. The other musicians who appear on these songs are an all-star cast including Elvin Jones, Sam Rivers, Woody Shaw, Lee Morgan and many others. This box set is highly recommended for fans of proto- jazz-rock fusion and boundary stretching 60s jazz.