Clifford Jordan Quartet - Night of the Mark VII

Night of the Mark VII catches tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan and his quartet stretching out on a live date from 1975, now back on vinyl in a new reissue.

A Chicago-born player with a big, burnished tone, Jordan came up in that city's fertile scene and made his first recordings for Blue Note in the late 1950s, later touring Europe with Charles Mingus's celebrated 1964 band. By the mid-1970s he was leading a working quartet of real chemistry, and this set captures the group in the kind of loose, generous form that only regular gigging can produce.

The five long performances leave plenty of room for everyone to dig in. The opener, titled simply John Coltrane, salutes a towering influence with searching, heartfelt intensity, while Highest Mountain gives the quartet a broad canvas to build on. Thelonious Monk's Blue Monk gets a relaxed, bluesy reading full of wit, and Midnight Waltz offers a graceful change of pace before the set closes.

It's a fine document of post-bop at its most soulful, and a reminder that some of the decade's richest jazz happened far from the spotlight. For collectors of 1970s small-group sessions, this reissue is a warm, welcome addition to the shelf, best heard in one sitting with the volume up.