Jimmy Cobb Only For The Pure At Heart CD

Personnel: Jimmy Cobb (drums); Richard Wyands (piano); Peter Bernstein (guitar); John Webber (bass).
Includes liner notes by Stanley Crouch.
Personnel: Jimmy Cobb (drums); Peter Bernstein (guitar); Richard Wyands (piano).
Audio Mixer: Don Mikkelsen.
Recording information: Fable Studios (02/10/1998).
Jimmy Cobb was in his late 60s when he recorded Only for the Pure at Heart, but the veteran drummer was still playing with the type of enthusiasm that had characterized his work with Miles Davis, Wes Montgomery, Cannonball Adderley and other big names 35 and 40 years earlier. Of course, enthusiasm is easier to come by when you have as solid and cohesive a band as Cobb does on this often relaxed bebop date, which employs Richard Wyands on piano, John Webber on bass and the Grant Green-influenced Peter Bernstein on guitar. Cobb called this working band Jimmy Cobb's Mob, although it shouldn't be confused with the Cobb's Mob that Texas tenor saxman Arnett Cobb led in the 1950s (when bassist George Duvivier wrote the song "Cobb's Mobb" for him). However, Jimmy Cobb's Mob of the late 1990s isn't unlike the bands he'd helped bring to life in the 1950s and 1960s, and straight-up bop is exactly what the drummer provides on material ranging from "Smile" and "Stars Fell on Alabama" to Bernstein's catchy "Vida Blue" and Webber's moody "Johnny Red." In fact, much of the CD sounds like it could have been recorded 40 years earlier. Only for the Pure at Heart is the work of an accomplished drummer who, at 68, continued to excel by sticking with the tried and proven. ~ Alex Henderson

Blister Pack