Cheap Stop & Listen (Music) (Baby Face Willette) Price

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Customer Reviews of Stop & Listen

This is in fact one of the most enjoyable organjazz records I ever heard...the music is free from "show offs" it is pure blues and groove...Wilette and Green plays very basic..the basic scales used is the blues scale.Wilettes playing is a pleasure to listen to..he has a kind of a "dry" bouncing sound with a kind of "staccato" touch to his licks...and Greens blues lines are never boring...he always tell his story..and every lick is a clear statement..on the ballad At Last Green demonstrates his skills as a "balladplayer",,beautiful playing that is.For anyone interested to read more about Baby Face Wilette can go to Pete Fallicos website ...

A "Must Have" album
Don't know how many at a time Toshiba-EMI press of these albums, but mine came in a jewel case with Japanese sleeve notes, and with a helpful full-size reprint of the original sleeve notes by Joe Goldberg. Goldberg makes use of an article by Frances Newton in the New Statesman about where Willette was coming from musically. The line up on the album is the same as on "Grant's First Stand"- another "must have" album. However, the result is different. Everybody gets a chance to spread out, with Green responding well to the bluesy and earthy nature of what Willette was doing, which was playing from a blues and gospel background, filling in the bass using the pedals and allowing Ben Dixon the drummer to spray clusters of fills around the music of the other two. Green sounds as though he loved every minute of the sessions. The chemistry works best on Willette's own compositions, of which my favourites are "Chances are few" and "Stop and listen". Even where he edges into standards,the outcome is a very bluesy stew. This is particularly true of "At last" which gets a real makeover. Even the version of Nat Adderley's "Work Song" is transformed. It's my most expensive purchase since the Freddie Roach import that I reviewed last year. However, repeated plays have confirmed that it is indeed a "must have" album, and if Eddie didn't convert you with his excellent review, I hope that mine will clinch the deal!

The Bluesiest of all the Blue Note Organists
If you see this CD, and it says IN STOCK, go get it... it ain't so easy to find... I picked up my copy in Tokyo... and that's a long way from home for me. Incidentally, if this is the same edition, instead of a clunk plastic CD case, it comes in a small LP like cardboard holder that looks pretty cool. The front and the back look like a miniturized version of what the original LP probably looked like. - - You'll need a magnifying glass to read the liner notes though... or a good command of Kanji to read the Japanese version contained inside of it.

Whatever, Stop and Listen is Baby Face Willette's follow up to his classic FACE TO FACE session. It was recorded in May of 1961.

Babyface Willette, though perhaps not the most remembered, was one of the first, most unique and best Blue Note "house organists" in the '60s - - he's heard here recording with the quintessential Blue Note house rhythm section, Grant Green on Guitar and Ben Dixon on drums.

Babyface had both his contemporary's Jimmy Smith and Jack McDuff's sense of coolness and groove, but put much more of a blues grind in his playing - - the end result, is you have early Grant Green playing at the core of his roots, and both are locked in by Ben Dixon, the quintessential Jazz organ drummer... The end result is some purrrrty darn heavenly Hammond...

Both the opening and closing tunes WILLOW and WORKSONG alone are worth the purchase of this great album. Get your hands on it !