JAZZY REVIEWS: Brew Moore - Brew Moore

This time I decided to reach back in time to 1956. This review is on a rare and rather unknown tenor sax player from the San Francisco Bay area, Mr. Brew Moore. One of my favorites, but it is damn near impossible to find recordings by Brew (I only have 2 LPs after over 4 decades of collecting).  This self-titled Fantasy monaural LP is a prized possession of mine.

The LP features 6 tracks, oddly though only five of the six were done at the Fantasy studio at the same time. The 5^th track was recorded at a live performance at UC Berkely with a completely different personnel line up and sound. That is the major drawback of this record. The 5 studio tracks are superb in every way. My favorite being their dreamy and melodic rendition of the Jimmy Van Heusen/Phil Silvers masterpiece “Nancy with the Laughing Face”. The engineering is superb on the 5 studio tracks, the live track is, well, live and a sharp contrast to the others. Annoying is an understatement as to why they would plunk this track dead center on side 2.

Brew shares sax duties with another Bay area mainstay, Harold Wylie, Drums are nicely handled by John Markham, Piano by John Marabuto, and the bass gets plucked by John Mosher. All these musicians have been featured on several other Fantasy records, both as sidemen and soloists.

Tracks, in addition to the aforementioned “Nancy”, include the originals Edison’s Lamp, Rhode Island Red, Marna Moves and Pat’s Batch. The live track is Dues Blues, which should have been left off all together!

As mentioned, recording is excellent with a very up close and intimate sound, as if you were right there.

This album has been re-issued on the OJC (Original Jazz Classics) label which is distributed by Fantasy on both vinyl and CD.

Performance 10/10-Amazing soloist and the unison sax work by Moore and Wylie is superb.

Recording 9/10-It would have been a 10 if the live track was omitted.

Overall 9/10-Once more, who mixes 5 perfect studio performance with one live recording that is so vastly different, smack dab in the middle of the B side?