This long out-of-print
Famous Door
album was finally reissued by the
Progressive
label nearly 30 years after its initial release.
Bill Watrous
has long been known as one of
jazz
's top trombonists (having a beautiful tone and a very fluent command of the
bebop
vocabulary) and it is always a joy to hear veterans tenor saxophonist
Al Cohn
, pianist
Hank Jones
, bassist
Milt Hinton
, and drummer
Steve Gadd
. However, the biggest surprise of this set is the brilliant playing of the vastly underrated trumpeter
Danny Stiles
, who often competes with
Watrous
for solo honors. The original five-song program, which includes
"Just Friends"
(mistakenly credited to
John Klemmer
rather than
John Klenner
!) and a lengthy
"Snafu,"
is expanded slightly with the inclusion of a second (and previously unreleased) version of
'
"Don't Tell Me What To Do."
A fine
date most notable for the playing of the late
. ~ Scott Yanow