Isao Suzuki - Blue City

This set was a follow-up to a huge breakthrough album for Suzuki called Blow Up, recorded a year earlier in 1973. Along with his standard setup with Watanabe, pianist Kunihiko Sugano, and Tetsujiroh Obara on drums, Suzuki, in order to use the cello more fully within the small group setting, added bassist Nobuyoshi Ino on two tracks, including "Body and Soul." What's most compelling about the music made in Japan during that era is that the notion that all jazz had to swing, swing, swing seems almost perverse now in contrast to the stilted, dated sounding riffs that the current American jazzmen heralded as saviors of the music.

Musicians:

Bass, Cello – Isao Suzuki
Drums – Tetsujiro Obara
Guitar – Kazumi Wanatabe
Piano – Kunihiko Sugano
Bass - Nobuyoshi Ino

Track Listings