80 Years Young: Live at the Blue Note, March 26, 2005

Playing with James Moody is like playing with a continuation of myself.
Dizzy Gillespie

It was an unforgettable week of music at the Blue Note in New York City, March 2005, celebrating the legendary saxophonist & flutist James Moody's 80th birthday. 80 Years Young documents the grand finale of that week, now released for the first time and in celebration of the 100th anniversary of his birth. The club was buzzing that night with jazz legends, sports figures, TV personalities, and alive with love, joy, and the heartbeat of a community united in reverence for a great American cultural icon. Supporting Moody were Jon Faddis, Randy Brecker, Paquito D'Rivera, and Slide Hampton, with David Hazeltine and Cedar Walton on piano, bassist Todd Coolman, and drummer Adam Nussbaum, with a brief introduction by jazz impresario George Wein. Featured in the set was "Moody's Mood for Love," over a half-century since it was a major hit for King Pleasure and Moody's signature tune over the decades. 80 Years Young is a powerful reminder of the lasting impact of his music and exudes the deep joyful connection he created with colleagues and audiences throughout his six-decade career.

Production Info:

Produced by Linda Moody
Recorded by Steve Remote, Aura Sonic
at Blue Note Jazz Club, New York, New York
on March 26, 2005
Mixed & mastered by Paul Wickliffe
at Skyline Productions, Inc, South Orange, NJ
Photography by Dino Perrucci
Cover design & layout by John Bishop

Reviews of 80 Years Young: Live at the Blue Note, March 26, 2005

Paris Move (Thierry De Clemensat)
James Moody, the late jazz legend who left us in 2010, endures as one of the towering figures of 20th-century jazz. His long-time collaborator and friend Dizzy Gillespie once said, "Playing with James Moody is like playing with an extension of myself." This concert opens with "Benny's From Heaven", a joyful number that features Moody's voice a r ...

Jazz'halo (Belgium) (Ferdinand Dupuis-Panther)
Short introduction to the current album from the point of view of Origin Records: "It was an unforgettable week of music at the Blue Note in New York City, March 2005, celebrating the legendary saxophonist & flutist James Moody's 80th birthday. 80 Years Young documents the grand finale of that week, now released for the first time and in celebratio ...

Jazz Weekly (George W Harris)
The first half of the party is all Moody, and it's a hoot, as he sings and plays through the humorous "Benny's From Heaven", vocaleses on ‘Moody's Mood For Love/The Television Rap" and floats with his flute on the bopper "Cherokee". With the invited hitting the stage, Faddis and Hampton are in to form on "Birk's Works", Walton joins in the jam wi ...

The San Diego Union Tribune (George Varga)
James Moody at 100: The late music great is being celebrated near and far A new album and star-studded concerts in San Diego and New York will honor the jazz legend, who longtime friend and collaborator Quincy Jones hailed as "a national treasure." In a career that stretched across seven decades, Grammy Award-winning music legend James Moody pe ...

Dusty Groove (Editor)
The great James Moody does a fantastic job of summing up his many years in music here – referencing his work with singer Eddie Jefferson and trumpet legend Dizzy Gillespie – while also stepping forth in a mode that shows just how much he's grown since those earlier years! Moody is wonderfully expressive here on tenor and flute, and works in a c ...

All About Jazz (Jack Bowers)
4 1/2 STARS When it comes to having fun, few events can compete with a birthday party. Fun is clearly at the summit of the agenda on 80 Years Young: Live at the Blue Note, recorded at the famed New York City nightspot on March 26, 2005, to celebrate saxophonist James Moody's eightieth birthday, and released on the same date in 2025 to honor the ce ...

New York Sun (Will Friedwald)
All-Star Celebration of James Moody's 100th Kicks Off the 2025 Blue Note Jazz Festival The jazz great was born in Savannah and raised by a single mother in Newark, which is why that city's performing arts center names its annual fall jazz festival in his honor. Somehow, my favorite bebopper, James Moody, was also my favorite rapper. In 1946, ...

L.A. Jazz Scene (Scott Yanow)
Everyone loved James Moody (1925-2010). He came to his musical maturity during the bebop era, playing tenor and alto including with the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band and in the 1960s with Gillespie's quintet. Moody continued to evolve through the years, taking up the flute and soprano while developing his own distinctive sound on all of his instruments. ...

DownBeat (Ted Panken)
Centennial Concert Celebrates All Things James Moody In the spring and summer of 2000, while reporting a DownBeat profile framed around James Moody's 75th birthday concert with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, I asked him to explain how he made the tenor, alto and soprano saxophones, and flute, each sound like his primary instrument. "I ...

DownBeat (John Murph)
To commemorate jazz legend James Moody's centennial birthday celebration, Origin Records releases the sanguine James Moody: 80 Years Young–Live At The Blue Note. The album captures both a March 2005 birthday party and a victory lap for Moody as he fronts a stellar and rotating cast of musicians that includes trombonist Slide Hampton, pianist Ceda ...

Tom Hull On the Web (Tom Hull)
Bebop saxophonist (1925-2010), mostly tenor, also played quite a bit of flute, joined Dizzy Gillespie in 1946 and was a regular in his various bands, while he established his own career with "Moody's Mood for Love" in 1952. He opens this 80th birthday bash singing "Benny's From Heaven," badly at first but so infectiously he won me over. He opened w ...

The New York City Jazz Record (Marilyn Lester)
Twenty years ago, James Moody celebrated his 80th birthday with a roster of all-star guest artists at the Blue Note in a concert that has now been immortalized in 80 Years Young: Live at the Blue Note. Throughout his career Moody played with the elites of jazz and had an unexpected 1952 hit in "Moody's Mood for Love", written by singer Eddie Jeffer ...

Modern Drummer (Editor)
For the last part of his life, the legendary James Moody chose to include Adam Nussbaum in his working band. Nussbaum was featured on the outstanding Moody studio recording with Hank Jones called Our Delight. For this live recording, Nussbaum is let loose behind the tenor sax legend. Nussbaum, bassist Todd Coolman, and pianist David Hazeltine set t ...

Jazzflits (The Netherlands) (Jeroen de Valk)
James Moody's old bandleader Dizzy Gillespie couldn't be there that night at the Blue Note, but he was there anyway. The traces he left in the life and music of Moody (1925–2010) were omnipresent. Think of the repertoire – pieces like ‘Bebop', ‘Birks' Works' and ‘Cherokee' – and a preference for real Jesus tempos, such as later generati ...