Latest Release
- 10 JAN 2025
- 9 Songs
- The Interplay Sessions [2-fer] · 1982
- Two Jims & Zoot (Remastered) · 1964
- Waiting Game · 1966
- Tenor Conclave · 1956
- 100 Best of Jazz · 2014
- Americans Swinging in Paris: Zoot Sims · 1956
- Al and Zoot · 1955
- Al and Zoot · 1955
- Stretching Out & Kansas City Revisited · 1958
- Michel Hausser - Mr. Vibes. Quartet & Octet Sessions 1958-60 · 2020
Essential Albums
- You can’t make up a story like Jutta Hipp’s. Born in Leipzig, Germany, in 1925, she fell in love with jazz as an adolescent, tuning in to radio stations broadcasting illicitly under Nazi watch. (Jazz was, in the eyes of the Reich, not only “degenerate art” but pejoratively labelled as “Negermusik”—strictly forbidden.) After the war, she took up a career as a pianist, moving to America in the mid-'50s with the help of the critic and musician Leonard Feather, who’d heard her play while travelling through Europe. Within a year, she’d signed to Blue Note; within five, she’d withdrawn from music entirely, settling into work at a garment factory in Queens, where she lived until her death in 2003. By the time Blue Note managed to find her in 2000, they brought along a gift: $40,000 in royalties. Released in 1957, Hipp’s date with the tenor player Zoot Sims was her last known recording—a snapshot of an artist just starting to settle into her own style. Clean, boppy, a little cool and refreshingly straightforward, the performances here aren’t calibrated to reach out and throttle—instead, your ears come to them. And while Sims is a far more forward player than Hipp, it’s Hipp who quietly shines: Listen to her delicate—but playfully percussive—solo on the ballad “Violets for Your Furs”, or the way she seems to trip up and down the keyboard on the brisk “Wee Dot”, incorporating just a hint of bluesy dissonance without ever losing her poise. This album is an Apple Digital Master made from a high-definition audio source, designed to cut noise while maximising clarity and efficiency, bringing you a sound virtually indistinguishable from the original 24-bit studio masters.
Artist Playlists
- The tenor man sustained the swinging comforts of pre-bebop jazz.
Singles & EPs
Live Albums
- 2015
- Lambert, Hendricks & Ross
About Zoot Sims
In addition to being one of the quintessential big-band soloists, tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims was an important figure on the West Coast jazz scene. Sims worked with legends such as Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Stan Kenton, and Joe Bushkin. He was also a part of Woody Herman's famed "Four Brothers" ensemble, named after a jazz standard for which Herman's band (noted for its quartet of sax players) was forever known. Sims led his own bands in the '70s and '80s, recording and touring frequently until his death in 1985.
- FROM
- Inglewood, CA, United States
- BORN
- 29 October 1925
- GENRE
- Jazz