Andrew Hill's Dance with Death: Vintage LP and Connoisseur series CD release.

Original 1980 LP Cover

Andrew Hill's (1937-2007) Dance With Death was left in Limbo for 12 long years, and one wonders why in the world this wasn't worthy of release in 1968?

 I suspect the greasy soul funk that Blue Note was into heavily at the end of the 60's, would have clashed with this high brow inside-outside modern jazz of Andrew Hill at the time.

Man I loved this Blue Note Connoisseur CD series when it was around.

I first got into jazz at the end of the 90's when Legacy started releasing the metal spine Miles Davis Boxes, and then ken Burns came out with his rather incomplete yet still entertaining documentary "Jazz".

 Blue Note's reissue program throughout the early 2000's really gave me a jazz education to savor. Andrew Hill was a pianist I really gravitated toward, the unreleased music of Passing Ships and the Mosaic Box sets were things I listened to first, newer recordings like Dusk were also favorites, then I went to the back catalog checking out albums like Point of Departure and Judgement.

I remember thinking how Hill struck the perfect balance between hardbop and avant-garde jazz. Andrew's music never goes off the deep end, hill reminds me a lot of Monk, and even Ellington, then he will give you this whiff of Cecil Taylor to keep you on your toes.

New vinyl reissue: 

These are just ways for me to describe what I sense when I listen to Hill's music. I always thought Hill's music really works well with husky toned tenor men.

Joe Henderson comes to mind the most, and really they were a perfect match for each other, with Joe appearing on Hill's Black Fire, and Hill on Henderson's Our Thing.

The thing about Dance With Death, beyond the quality of Hill's compositions, is the underrated Saxophone of Joe Farrell.

 Farrell's contributes some haunting soprano sax on "Yellow Violet", a fantastic track that stays in your head, the track would be on my personal favorite list of jazz compositions, hard to shake that melody.

The rest of the album has Farrell playing tenor, you never hear Farrell being mentioned on best saxophone player lists. He would certainly be on my underrated list, all of Farrell's CTI recordings are worth a spin.

Billy Higgins on Drums and Charles Tolliver on trumpet, it's pretty hard to complain about this band, Dance With Death works well all the way around.

Other than possibly Point of Departure, I can't think of too many Hill albums better, crazy to think how so much of his best output wasn't even released until after 1975. Fact is, I don't think Hill created a single mediocre album, they're all good.

CD Reissue

Music from recent releases (the last 15 years), Pax, Change, Passing Ships, and the fantastic 3 disc Mosaic Select set were finally made available in limited edition form including the CD reissue of Dance With Death.

All of this 1960's music was released long after the Blue Note label went off the rails as far as modern jazz being the main source for the label.

  Some of the music was released for the first time on some double albums in the mid 70's, even some of it under Saxophonist Sam Rivers' name. Then finally, this pictured original release of Dance With Death from 1980.

I have to say sonically I find the CD issue to be pretty good, pretty decently faithful to the vinyl sound. A lot of those reissued Blue Note CD's can certainly have a tinny bright sound.  I didn't think this was marred by that defect on CD.

The pictured original LP copy is not easy to find, I was lucky I found it several years ago, but as mentioned, the CD should do just fine.