The Album
Despite the "Jazz 1960" banner splashed across the cover, every note here was recorded in Hollywood in 1956 at Radio Recorders, during one of the most poignant stretches of Art Pepper's life: he had just been released from his first prison term in mid-1956 and cut these sides with pianist-arranger Marty Paich only weeks later, months before his career-defining "Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section" session. Five tracks feature Pepper's alto in a quartet with Paich, first issued on the rare Tampa LP pairing the two, including Pepper's own composition "Art's Opus"; the other five are Paich-led sides with Larry Bunker's vibes and Howard Roberts' guitar, drawn from an earlier Tampa 10-inch. By the time these masters resurfaced on Interlude with a glossy, bachelor-pad cover and a fabricated later release date, Pepper himself was once again behind bars, making the album an odd, bittersweet placeholder for an absent star. Paich, meanwhile, was emerging as one of the most important arrangers on the West Coast scene, later responsible for the charts on "Art Pepper + Eleven" and numerous Mel Torme sessions. Pepper's playing throughout is light, buoyant and melodically generous - the sound of a newly free man breezing through standards and originals - and the set is valued today as an important, if commercially obscure, early document of his mature alto voice.