Music Monday: Blue Notes

A slight glitch in downloading a manuscript (botched permissions!) gave me more free time this weekend than I expected. As a result, I listened to a few albums (after complaining to a musician friend on Friday night that I hadn’t found time to listen to music as much as I would have liked lately). 

I had a chance to enjoy vibe player Joel Ross’s new album Gospel Music (2026). It features a nice cross section of contemporary artists: Josh Johnson on alto, Maria Grand on tenor, Jeremy Corren on piano, Kanoa Mendenhall on bass, and Jeremy Dutton in drums. Various other Blue Note artists make cameos. It’s a good album even on tracks where Ross incorporates vocalists (which simply isn’t my jam).

Hearing Ross on vibes got me thinking of Bobby Hutcherson and his playing on Mode for Joe that just happened to appear 60 years prior to Gospel Music. Mode for Joe is a Joe Henderson masterpiece featuring many of the 1960s Blue Note guys along with Henderson and Hutcherson: Curtis Fuller on trombone, Lee Morgan on trumpet, Cedar Walton on piano, Joe Chambers on drums, and Ron Carter on bass. It’s a great album that threads the needle between this group’s hard bop sensibilities and modal jazz. Curtis Fuller’s solos are particularly enjoyable.

Finally, I put on Dr. Lonnie Smith’s 2016 Blue Note album: Evolution. It a good album. I particularly dig Keyon Harrold’s trumpet and John Ellis’s sax. I want to check out Ellis’s new album Fireball later this week, but keeping in my Blue Note jam, I’ll enjoy Dr. Lonnie Smith (for more on the good doctor’s tunes, go here) for now. Do check out the SYNTH EXPLOSION version of “Favorite Things” (is there a hint of Sun Ra here?)

Finally, a bonus track that has nothing to do with Blue Note or years ending in “6.” For whatever reason, I had not heard Charles Lloyd’s version of “Georgia” from his 2000 ECM date Water is Wide.