Back in the fifties, the heyday of “intellectual jazz,” George Russell was perhaps the most cerebral of them all, not that it netted him much at the box office. But he did get on the tube now and again, on those Sunday afternoon “public service” broadcasts the networks put on to satisfy the FCC and to show the hicks back home what rare delights were available in the Big Apple, home of everything cool.
In 1959 Russell recorded his own salute to the Big Apple, New York, N.Y., issued on the Impulse label. It’s available on CD, with wonderful work from John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Max Roach, and others, along with some hilariously dated bebop poetry from Jon Hendricks, who wasn’t really always this, um, terrible.*
*Sample lines: “Think you can lick it? Run to the wicket, buy you a ticket, all the way to New York, New York.
