Tasty mixture of 70s post bop and fusion
5
By Jazzjunkie
This was one of my favorite albums in the 70s and still sounds fresh. Jack DeJohnette just wales on the kit, suspended somewhere between funk and dreamy ECM color, Herbie nails it down, George Benson's lines are hard bop/bugaloo (before his commercial period), and Freddie Hubbard is a ball of fire. This is visionary stuff and feels more like a spunky teenager than the 40 year old it is. I still can't get the feel of Straight Life pinned down exactly; it's somewhere between a samba and and a straight eight feel, but the ambiguity is tense and delightful. I am not big a fan of CTI productions, but this is one of the few that I'd put in the top 50 of my jazz collection.
