Isao Suzuki Quartet + 1 Blue City

180g Vinyl LP with original OBI strip and liner notes reproduction!
Remastered and cut by Bernie Grundman!
Pressed and printed in Japan!
Limited Quantity!
Isao Suzuki is the grand master of jazz in Japan. He is a bassist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, producer and bandleader. Isao Suzuki was born in Tokyo on January 2, 1933. His musical career began in 1956 when he played double bass at a US military base in Tokyo. in 1970, he went to New York at the suggestion of Art Blakey and joined his legendary group JAZZ MESSENGERS. During this time, he worked and recorded with Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Ella Fitzgerald, Wynton Kelly, Bobby Timmons, Jim Hall, Ron Carter and others.
The album "Blue City" was the successor to the album Blow Up, with which Suzuki had his big breakthrough a year earlier, in 1973. In addition to his standard line-up of Watanabe, pianist Kunihiko Sugano and Tetsujiroh Obara on drums, Suzuki added bassist Nobuyoshi Ino on two tracks, including "Body and Soul", in order to make better use of the cello in the small group. The fascinating thing about Japanese music of this era is that the idea that all jazz should swing, swing, swing, as opposed to the stilted, dated-sounding riffs that today's American jazzmen proclaimed as the savior of the music, seems almost perverse today. An excellent jazz record, made at a time when the jazz of the 1950s and 1960s was still remembered. And the fact that it still sounds relevant today is proof of its quality.

Features:

• 180g Virgin Vinyl
• Limited Edition
• 33rpm
• Remastered and cut by Bernie Grundman
• From the Original Master Tapes
• OBI strip
• Pressed and printed in Japan

Musicians:

• Isao Suzuki, bass, cello
• Nobuyoshi Ino, bass
• Tetsujiro Obara, drums
• Kazumi Watanabe, guitar
• Kunihiko Sugano, piano

Selections:

Side A
1. Body And Soul
2. 45th Street At 8th Avenue
Side B
1. Play Fiddle Play
2. Blue City

Recorded March 4 1974 at Aoi Studio, Tokyo