Kenny Burrell, the living legend on guitar, has released so many amazing and important jazz albums or enriched them as a sideman that it is simply impossible to pick out the most significant ones. Actually, Mr. Burrell paved the way for many generations of subsequent jazz guitarists with his first guitar runs in the early ’50s.

But that didn’t happen by chance either, out of a vacuum, on a whim. The man to whom this recording by Mr. Burrell is another sonic monument is Charlie Christian, the genuine pioneer of the guitar in jazz: the first guitarist to play ‘anything but rhythm’, Mr. Christian oriented his melodic line and phrasing very closely to the saxophone, and was not least one of the pioneers of bebop, in his very short career, in Benny Goodman’s orchestra, among others.

In 1967, these references were far away, jazz was at a differentiated peak between soul jazz and free jazz, and so Mr. Burrell’s recording, in all its sophistication and traditionally-influenced joy of playing, seems timeless in the best sense. With a rhythm section consisting of Ron Carter and Grady Tate, everything grooves and swings at the height of the times, grounded in tradition. Always wonderful!

Stefan Mohr