1967 · Album
Ode to 52nd Street
Recorded 1967 · Cadet · Produced by Unverified — omitted
Burrell Takes 52nd Street Uptown
Burrell stretches out here in ways his studio dates rarely allowed, and it suits him.
By 1967, Kenny Burrell had already made some of his best-known records — Midnight Blue (1963) being the obvious touchstone — so Ode to 52nd Street (1967) arrives as something a little different in his catalog. The title is a nod to the stretch of Manhattan that once housed the great jazz clubs, a street that by the late sixties had largely been swallowed up by other things. There's a nostalgic thread running through the record, but it doesn't wallow in it. Burrell was too practical a musician for that.
The album is a big-band outing, which immediately sets it apart from the smaller combo work Burrell was best known for. The arrangements give the whole thing a warm, full sound — this is not a stripped-down guitar album where you're watching one guy think out loud. There's weight behind it, brass and reeds filling in the spaces that on Midnight Blue were left open and smoky. Some listeners will prefer the intimacy of his trio and quartet recordings, and that's fair. But if you want to hear Burrell operating in a larger orchestral context, this is one of the cleaner examples of it.
Released on the Cadet label, the record fits into a moment when a lot of serious jazz guitarists were being asked to do something a little more ambitious in the studio, and Burrell handles it without sounding stiff or overproduced. It's a solid record — not his most essential, but a worthwhile one for anyone who already knows his smaller-group work and wants to hear where else he could go. Think of it as a companion piece rather than a centerpiece.
Who's playing
Kenny Burrellguitar
