Straight Ahead

Vinyl LP pressing. Reissue, originally released in 1961 by Prestige/New Jazz label. Straight Ahead marks the last Eric Dolphy's appearance within a series of fortunate collaborations with saxophonist Oliver Nelson. This is a great modern jazz album taking shape from a quintet studio session (all first takes) engineered and supervised by master Rudy Van Gelder and featuring Oliver Nelson (alto and tenor saxes, clarinet), Eric Dolphy (alto sax, bass clarinet, flute), Richard Wyands (piano), George Duvivier (double bass), and Roy Haynes on drums. A serious bunch of jazz stylists all caught in fine form and concentration. Needless to add that the Nelson-Dolphy sax tandem shines throughout the whole album while Duvivier and Haynes inject their angular yet hard swinging groove. The track list consists of five Nelson's originals plus Milt Jackson's "Ralph's New Blues".