Sweet Honey Bee is an album by American jazz pianist and composer Duke Pearson, released on the Blue Note label in 1967.[3] The woman on the cover was Pearson's fiancee Betty.[4]
| Sweet Honey Bee | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 1967 | |||
| Recorded | December 7, 1966 | |||
| Studio | Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey | |||
| Genre | Jazz | |||
| Length | 39:27 | |||
| Label | Blue Note BST 84252 | |||
| Producer | Alfred Lion | |||
| Duke Pearson chronology | ||||
| ||||
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   [1] |
| The Penguin Guide to Jazz |  [2] |
Reception
editAllmusic awarded the album with 4 stars and its review by Scott Yanow states: "Pianist/composer Duke Pearson leads an all-star group on this run-through of seven of his compositions. The musicians (trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, altoist James Spaulding, Joe Henderson on tenor, bassist Ron Carter, drummer Mickey Roker, and the pianist/leader) are actually more impressive than many of the compositions, although the swinging minor-toned "Big Bertha" deserved to become a standard."[5] The Penguin Guide review says: "the highlights are the lushly voiced melodies of 'Sudel' and 'Gaslight', the former a tune which Pearson had recorded some years earlier with a different group. Hubbard and Henderson eat up their solo opportunities without sundering the essentially easy-going feel which was [a] Pearson trademark, and while not all the material is up to this standard, as a showcase for the pianist as writer and group-leader, this is surely the best thing available at present [2004]."[2]
Popular culture
editIn David Mitchell's novel Ghostwritten, Satoru, a young Japanese jazz-lover working in a record shop in Tokyo, says of a girl who comes into the store, "if you know Duke Pearson's 'After the Rain,' well, she was as beautiful and pure as that."[6]
Track listing
editAll compositions by Duke Pearson.
- "Sweet Honey Bee" – 5:00
- "Sudel" – 5:43
- "After the Rain" – 4:45
- "Gaslight" – 6:01
- "Big Bertha" – 5:58
- "Empathy" – 6:00
- "Ready Rudy?" – 6:01
Personnel
edit- Duke Pearson – piano
- Joe Henderson – tenor saxophone
- Freddie Hubbard – trumpet
- James Spaulding – flute, alto saxophone
- Ron Carter – bass
- Mickey Roker – drums
References
edit- ^ Yanow, Scott (2011). "Sweet Honey Bee – Duke Pearson | AllMusic". allmusic.com. Retrieved 17 July 2011.
- ^ a b Richard Cook and Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 7th ed. (Penguin, 2004: ISBN 978-0-14-101416-6).
- ^ Duke Pearson discography accessed September 6, 2010
- ^ Nat Hentoff, liner notes to Sweet Honey Bee (Blue Note CDP 0777 7 89792 2 7).
- ^ Yanow, S.Allmusic Review: Sweet Honey Bee accessed 06 June 2010
- ^ David Mitchell, Ghostwritten (Random House Digital, Inc., 2001: ISBN 0375724508), p. 41.