Scott continues to draw inspiration from, and give inspiration to, the players around her. And in the tune that they started the day with, they draw inspiration from another source as well. "Blue Seven" was originally recorded by Sonny Rollins for his 1956 Prestige album, Saxophone Colossus. It was one of those improvised-on-the-spot numbers that Rudy Van Gelder used to call the "five o'clock blues," but this one clicked. Scott was the first to pick it up, but it has become a minor jazz standard since then.
Rollins gave Scott and Co. a lot more than just a few variations on standard blues changes, and they were able to pick it up and run with it. At 11:17, it was the longest cut on Saxophone Colossus, giving Rollins plenty of room to demonstrate the scope of his improvisatory genius. Scott is much tighter, at seven minutes and with three soloists, so it's a very different interpretation, and a highly satisfying one. Scott had some formats that she worked well in: organ trio, quartets with Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Stanley Turrentine. Familiarity can mean growth in jazz, and we're lucky to have those albums with her regulars, but we're also lucky that Bob Weinstock and Esmond Edwards put her in new situations from time to time. Newman and Nelson and Scott weave in and out and around each other in a gorgeous piece of music. The history of this era, session by session, is the discovery of so many brilliant pieces of music that were written or improvised for one recording session, and never played again. This is one that escaped that scrap heap of time.
These folks do pretty well with more familiar tunes, two, like Rube Bloom and Harry Ruby's "Give Me the Simple Life" and Phil Silvers/Jimmy Van Heusen's "Nancy (With the Laughing Face"). In fact, you don't have to get very far into this album before you realize that this is exceptional work, jazz the way it should be played by artists of the first rank, connecting with each other to an unusually well-attuned degree, even for jazz, which is always about that.
Shirley Scott's output was so prodigious that maybe an album or two got lost in the shuffle. And she isn't played now as often as she once was, and women have never quite gotten their due in the jazz world--Scott did better than most, but even so, she probably never really got her due. This album may have been one of those that got lost in the shuffle. It wasn't released until 1966. Today, when almost everything makes its way to YouTube, you can only find a couple of tracks from Blue Seven. But it is worth seeking out. Oh, my, yes.
Esmond Edwards produced. One track, "How Sweet," was left off the LP, but made it onto another Scott album, Now's the Time, and later onto the CD reissue of Blue Seven. "Blue Seven" was also released as a 45 RPM single, and I hope it got some jukebox play.
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