Clockwise: The Music of Cedar Walton

Although he solos little, Stafford is the ringer, but the real star here is Cedar Walton and his music. Walton was known for his compositions but as far as "songbooks" go he tends to be overlooked. This is possibly the first recording, Walton aside, to exclusively feature his music. The charts on the 10 compositions [75:47] strike me as pretty straight ahead with ample solo space. Some of Walton's compositions have become standards like "Bolivia" and "Holy Land" but so much is being recorded and released it is hard to notice. This is true also for individual efforts and combos, many of
them mentioned in this column quarterly, there are great individual artistic performances but they do not often have the money or payola to fight through the tide of new releases long enough to be noticed. It's dispiriting for me as a writer/producer think of the frustration individual musicians must feel being overlooked.