The Poetry of Jazz

Not everyone who reads my reviews know that I got my start in "show business" doing live spoken-word, so Phil's excellent poetry is a total treat for me... it's earned a permanent place on my iPhone (yikes, I'm running outta' space)... Benjamin's hip & silky sax on tunes like "The Unknowable" is what convinced me it had to be there... there are a whole HOST of other players on this fantastic CD, so long a list, in fact, that you'll need to go to the Origin Records page for the release to scope out who joined the party. What really makes this "click" for jazz listeners who understand just how important poetry is to jazz & it's roots is Phil's inspiring and intimate spoken-word on tunes like "Call It Music", the absolute best jazz/poetry song I've heard (yet) in 2018. You get well over an hour of the coolest jazz you'll hear for a while, & that's especially true on songs like my personal favorite of the fourteen offered up... on "A Dozen Dawn Songs, Plus One", you get "the rest of the story", as Paul Harvey would have said... just SUPERB work here that gets a MOST HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, with an "EQ" (energy quotient) rating of a (perfect) 5.00 - that means, of course, that it also gets my "PICK" for "best jazz/poetry album".