Passion Flower: Zoot Sims Plays Duke Ellington

From his 1940s work with Benny Goodman and Woody Herman until his death in 1985, tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims was the quintessential jazz musician. He always kept an enthusiastic commitment to improvising and a profound allegiance to the rhythmic art of swing. On this 1979 date he and a big band play distinctive Ellington orchestrations written by Benny Carter, who, like Ellington, helped architect the Swing Era. Here Sims's melodic and evocative tenor mingles the lightness of Lester Young with some of the richly grained sound of Ben Webster, and his performances of Billy Strayhorn's lush "Passion Flower" and Duke's "I've Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)" are especially moving. The band is sprinkled with outstanding veterans, including saxophonists Buddy Collette and Marshall Royal, trombonists J.J. Johnson and Grover Mitchell, and the superb pianist Jimmy Rowles. Together they pump fresh and distinctive life into a vision of Ellington's music that includes the spontaneous, the romantic, and the orchestral. --Stuart Broomer