Here is how this review is going to go: I am going to tell what is bad about this album. Then I am going to tell you what is average. I am going to finish by telling you what is good.
The bad: flute. The worse: alto flute. I repeat what I have said frequently and loudly: Eric Dolphy is the only musician who should be allowed to play the flute in jazz. Anything else with flute in it should be legally prevented from calling itself jazz. That means, since Dolphy is dead, that no new jazz should have flute in it. (On a related tangent, I am starting to get there with the organ as well. I am pretty sure that the program director at my local jazz radion station is taking kickbacks from Hammond based on how much of the playlist has an organ in it.) There is a certain something that a musician needs to play jazz flute, and unless you died of diabetic complications in Europe, you don't have it.
The average: Everything else, with one exception. The rhythm section doesn't do anything a competent high school jazz band couldn't pull off (and I include Basie in that). Jones' trumpet tone is borderline saccharine, which in combination with the afore-malinged flute is painful, if you can consider it separately, you can tolerate it.
The good, in fact the excellent, at least when considered on its merits: Foster's tenor saxophone. Great tone and interesting stuff.
My conclusion is that you shouldn't go out of your way to hear this album.
I have to finish this review by stating that while I don't actively hate this album, I am still quite frustrated by it. I am frustrated because there just isn't anything in this album to react to. Bad recordings give your something to criticize. Good albums give you something to praise. This one just sort of sits, its only defining characteristic its abundance of flute.
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