LISTEN TO ONE: Rockabye
This is an odd little session -- odd in so many ways. First, each cut seems to have slightly different personnel, although that may not be the case. it may been the same group of musicians, billed differently for each cut. Second, with all the painstaking care taken to separately identify the musicians for each cut in the session log, no one seems to have jotted down the date of the session -- it's just "some time in early 1965." Third, they don't seem to have had any strong reason for calling this session, unless it was just that Benny Golson had paid the big band for one more day. Each of the three cuts from the sometime in early May session ended up on a different McDuff potpourri album, one released in 1967, the other two in 1969.
Since Prestige doesn't seem to have given a lot of time and attention to the session, I won't either. Lew Futterman, McDuff's manager/producer, was at the controls. McDuff's core group is solid, and Benny Golson was doing some very interesting work with this studio band of unidentified musicians, which is another oddity of the session. Golson, at least according to Lew Futterman, jumped at the chance to record with McDuff, and a second go-round, now that McDuff has faded into history and Golson receives the honors of esteemed elder, is good to have. I've discussed their previous collaboration here.
"Rockabye" was released on the 1967 album The Midnight Sun. Two years later, "English Country Gardens" came out on I Got a Woman and "Shortnin' Bread" on Steppin' Out.
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