Variant chronology
1963 - Mono, deep-groove green Moodsville label, 203 S. Washington Ave address, misprinted "Montuno Blues" on label <- this copy
1963 - Stereo, Moodsville MVST 29, same green label design - price band unavailable for this variant
1968 - Prestige PRST 7578 reissue, retitled "Out Of This World," dark blue Prestige labels - price band unavailable for this variant
1997 - Original Jazz Classics OJCCD-926-2 remastered CD reissue - price band unavailable for this variant
2016/2019/2022 - Analogue Productions APRJ 29 / CPRJ 29 SA audiophile 180g and 45 RPM reissues (Kevin Gray remaster)
The Album
Bluesey Burrell was recorded on September 14, 1962 at Rudy Van Gelder's Englewood Cliffs studio, one of a run of relaxed, blues-and-ballad-centered sessions Prestige cut for its mood-music Moodsville imprint. Guitarist Kenny Burrell, already established as one of the most lyrical and blues-steeped voices on the instrument, is paired here with tenor giant Coleman Hawkins, the father of the jazz tenor saxophone, for four of the seven tracks, while the remaining pieces feature Burrell's quartet alone with pianist Tommy Flanagan, bassist Major Holley, drummer Eddie Locke and conguero Ray Barretto. The program mixes standards ("I Thought About You," "Out of This World," "Guilty") with a Latin-tinged original, "Tres Talbras," and two Burrell-penned blues, reflecting the loose, unhurried, late-afternoon session described in the original liner notes by Robert Levin. The record arrived at a productive moment for Burrell, sandwiched between other Prestige/Moodsville dates and just months before his best-known Blue Note album, Midnight Blue; it captures him at his most relaxed and unhurried, favoring warm tone and economical phrasing over technical display. Hawkins, for his part, was enjoying a late-career renaissance in the early 1960s, and his appearances here are treated by critics as a highlight, his still-vital, breathy authority anchoring the more uptempo cuts. Though a modest, low-key release even by Moodsville's mood-music standards, the album has endured as a favorite among deep soul-jazz collectors for its unpretentious blues feeling and the rare studio pairing of Burrell and Hawkins, and it was praised on release, drawing a four-star review in Down Beat.
The Label
The side labels are the standard green Moodsville design with silver print, MOODSVILLE banner, the 203 S. Washington Ave., Bergenfield, N.J. address, and "HIGH FIDELITY" band at the base, consistent with Moodsville's 1961-64 label design. This copy carries the label catalogue number MVLP 29 (mono) rather than MVST 29, and the vinyl is deep-groove on both sides, distinguishing it from the flat, no-deep-groove mono pressing of the same label misprint. The label's track A4 is printed "MONTUNO BLUES," a Moodsville-era typo also seen on the non-deep-groove mono pressing and carried through into the 2016 Analogue Productions reissue, so the misspelling alone does not separate pressings - it is the physical deep groove that dates this copy to Moodsville's earliest (1961-63) mono manufacturing run, before the deep-groove feature was phased out industry-wide by the mid-1960s.
Fidelity
Rudy Van Gelder recorded and cut this session himself; the mono lacquer carries his signature warm, present, slightly forward jazz sound typical of his early-60s Prestige/Moodsville dates, and the deep-groove pressing here represents Moodsville's earliest and most direct cut from that master. Collectors on the forums generally rate these original mono Van Gelder Moodsville/Prestige pressings above the contemporaneous stereo counterpart for tonal cohesion, since the mono mix avoids the hard-panned, less-musical channel separation of the stereo and later stereo-sourced reissues. Within the album's full fidelity hierarchy this original mono Van Gelder pressing sits at or near the top alongside the stereo original, well above the 1968 Prestige PRST 7578 reissue and the OJC/RVG CD remasters, and is generally considered a different but comparably desirable listening experience to the audiophile Analogue Productions 45 RPM and SACD editions (2016/2019), which are sourced from the stereo master and prized for extreme quietness and separation rather than mono cohesion.
