Five-Star Collection... Kenny Drew

The Kenny Drew Trio
New Faces • New Sounds

Blue Note has presented a number of inspired and inspiring modern jazz piano artists in recent years, several of whom were virtually discovered and launched in the record field by this label. Among them are Bud Powell, Wynton Kelly, Thelonious Monk, and Horace Silver. This is no less true of Kenny Drew, a native New Yorker who was playing around town for quite some time, more or less ignored by the name musicians, until Howard McGhee used him on a Blue Note session in January 1950.

(...)

After his disc debut with McGhee and consequent acceptance by the big-timers, he was heard in clubs or on records with everyone from Coleman Hawkins, Stan Getz, and Lester Young to Milt Jackson, Sonny Stitt, and Buddy DeFranco. It was with Buddy’s quartet, touring the country and recording frequently in 1952 and '53, that most jazz fans became familiar with his name and style.

(...)

Kenny's solo debut in this set is notable for the colorful variety of the performances, ranging from the brilliant elaboration of Jerome Kern's Yesterdays to the swinging simplicity of his own Drew's Blues. Particularly impressive is his unusual choice of tempos, exemplified by the jump treatments of It Might As Well Be Spring and Be My Love — the latter might aptly be described as the answer to Lanza!

(...)

Kenny’s work is cast in the modernist mold, but it seems to owe allegiance to no one model; on the contrary, a careful hearing of these sides will reveal that Kenny has already developed his own personality at the keyboard. He is a proud addition to the growing ranks of the modern jazz piano family. *Leonard Feather (from the liner notes)*

Often praised on this page for his many excellent solos with DeFranco, 25-year-old Kenny wins his solo colors here with a set of six standards, a blues, and a pretty original.

On occasion he can be simple as all get out (Everything); then he can turn around and be as complex as you like, in the overlong but never dull Yesterdays. At the uptempos, as when he swingingly delanzafies Be My Love, he's in the Bud Powell class.

Art Blakey and Curly Russell, as you'd expect, are responsible for at least two-thirds of the success of the trio, with Art soloing, not too long or too flashily, in a couple of spots.

(Down Beat, Chicago, September 23, 1953 [5 stars])*

Side 1

1 - Yesterdays

(Kern, Harbach)

2 - Stella By Starlight

(Young, Washington) 

3 - Gloria

(Kenny Drew)

4 - Be My Love

(Cahn, Brodszky)

Side 2

5 - Lover Come Back To Me

(Romberg, Hammerstein)

6 - Everything Happens To Me

(Adair)

7 - It Might As Well Be Spring

(Rodgers, Hammerstein)

8 - Drew's Blues

(Kenny Drew)

Kenny Drew (piano), Curly Russell (bass), Art Blakey (drums).

Recorded at Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, New Jersey, April 16, 1953