Great Jazz Albums (IMO) #41

Booker Little.  Booker Little 4 and Max Roach (1958).  Booker Little was only 23 when he died in 1961 of kidney failure.  He was a brilliant trumpet player who was beginning to build on the expressive range of Clifford Brown, who also died prematurely at the age of 25.  As one critic described, Little had "a memorable melancholy sound and his interval jumps looked toward the avant-garde, but he also swung like a hard bopper."  He played often as a sideman and made four albums under his own name, the first of which was Booker Little 4 and Max Roach. This "forward-looking hard bop set" features tenor George Coleman, pianist Tommy Flanagan, bassist Art Davis, and drummer Max Roach.  

[Related posts:  Great Jazz Albums  #1 (Hank Mobley), #2 (Horace Silver), #3 (Sonny Rollins), #4 (Sonny Clark), #5 (Dexter Gordon), #6 (Cannonball Adderley); #7 (Bill Evans), #8 (McCoy Tyner), #9 (Clifford Brown), #10 (Sinatra), #11 (Monk), #12 (Kenny Dorham), #13 (Coltrane), #14 (Duke Ellington), #15 (Miles Davis), #16 (Wayne Shorter), #17 (Dinah Washington); #18 (Sarah Vaughan); #19 (Stan Getz); #20 (Blue Mitchell); #21 (Gene Ammons); #22 (Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers); #23 (Red Garland); #24 (Ella Fitzgerald); #25 (Charlie Parker); #26 (Art Pepper); #27 (Bud Powell); #28 (John Hicks); #29 (Kenny Barron); #30 (Coleman Hawkins); #31 (Count Basie);  #32 (Benny Carter w/ Ben Webster and Barney Bigard); #33 (Chet Baker); #34 (Thad  Jones); #35 (The Great Jazz Trio); #36 (Ahmad Jamal); #37 (Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond); #38 (Johnny Griffin and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis); #39 (Charles McPherson);
 #40 (Harold Land)]