Saxophonist Jackie McLean’s evocative 1965 album Jacknife is the latest entry in Blue Note Records’ Tone Poet series.
Jackknife finds the saxophonist in a post-bop mode with trumpeters Lee Morgan and Charles Tolliver, pianist Larry Willis, bassist Larry Ridley, and drummer Jack DeJohnette.
This stereo Tone Poet Vinyl Edition was produced by Joe Harley, mastered by Kevin Gray from the original analog master tapes, pressed on 180g vinyl at RTI, and packaged in a deluxe gatefold tip-on jacket.
Jacknife was among McLean’s 21 albums recorded at Blue Note between 1959 and 1967. Other highlights include 1962’s Let Freedom Ring, inspired by the innovations of Ornette Coleman; 1965’s It’s Time!, which featured two emerging jazz stars, Herbie Hancock and Charles Tolliver; And 1967’s Action which is steeped in both hard bop and modal jazz.
McLean preferred not to discuss his music in terms of categories. “I’ve grown out of being just a bebop saxophone player, or being a free saxophone player,” he told The New York Times in 1983. “I don’t know where I am now. I guess I’m somewhere mixed up between all the saxophonists who ever played.”
Born John Lenwood McLean in Harlem, he started playing the alto saxophone as a teenager. His father was guitarist John McLean (who played with Tiny Bradshaw) and a young McLean befriended neighbors like Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, and Sonny Rollins. McLean recorded several hard bop LPs for Prestige in the wake of his recording debut as a 20-year-old on Miles Davis’ 1951 album Dig. McLean also worked with George Wallington, Charles Mingus, and Art Blakey’s The Jazz Messengers.
In the 1970s, McLean became a prominent jazz educator, teaching at University of Hartford, where he was later named director of the university’s newly formed African-American music program, one of the first degree programs in the field. In 2000, the university renamed the program the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz.
Order Jackie McLean’s Jacknife on vinyl now.
