A Saxophonist's Delayed Reckoning
Consequence sat in the vault for fourteen years before anyone heard it—and that delay tells you something.
Consequence is one of those albums that reveals how arbitrary the music business can be. Jackie McLean recorded this in 1965 when he was in his mid-thirties, a seasoned player with a sharp, angular tone and a gift for pushing bebop into uncomfortable spaces. The tracks sat unreleased until 1979, when Blue Note finally put them out as LT-994 with minimal fanfare. By then McLean had moved on, and most listeners never knew the album existed. It didn't get real attention until 1993, when Mosaic included it in a four-disc compilation of his complete Blue Note sessions from 1964-66, and even then only 5,000 copies were pressed. Finally, in 2005, it got a proper limited-edition CD release. That's three separate windows to hear this music, across four decades.
What's actually on the tape? Solid mid-1960s hard bop with McLean's characteristic tone—slightly nasal, urgent, never pretty. The rhythm section keeps things grounded while McLean cuts and darts through the changes, finding corners most players wouldn't look for. It's not a masterpiece, and it doesn't need to be. It's a working session from a working musician, competent and direct. McLean had done better work; he'd also done worse. If you know Miles Davis or John Coltrane from this era, you'll recognize the language Consequence speaks.
Where does it fit in McLean's catalog? It's solidly peripheral—neither the place to start nor essential listening. His earlier Prestige sessions and his Blue Note work from the late 1950s hold up better. Consequence matters mainly to completists and people already deep in McLean's music. But that's okay. Not every album needs to be a cornerstone. Sometimes a record is valuable just because it exists, because it documents a real player on a real day, even if nobody was paying attention when it happened.
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More by Jackie McLean
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The musicians on this record
Their own records, close in time
