Fred Kaplan

Labor of Love is one of the most pleasurable albums you're likely to hear all year—and it sounds amazing, too...what we have here is magic: classic blues tunes—"Stagger Lee," "My Creole Bell," Mistreated Blues," "Zanzibar," "John Henry," and more—treated with such love and wit and heartache and (to use a tired term that's appropriate here) authenticity.

I took another look at the blog I posted on December 21 ("The Best Jazz Albums of 2016"), a few more thoughts came to mind. With one exception (#5, Brad Mehldau Trio, Blues and Ballads, on Nonesuch), the big labels (or even labels big by jazz standards) are absent from the list. . .

Last year, Sony released The Complete Concert by the Sea, not just a remaster of Erroll Garner's classic 1955 live album but two extra discs containing the entire, unexpurgated concert, from start to finish casting new light on the pianist's sparkling wonders. It turns out that Garner's agent, Martha Glaser, who died a few years ago, had socked away thousands of tape reels of music—live concerts, studio sessions, rehearsals—and now her niece, Susan Rosenberg, who inherited the estate, is going through the cache, with the aid of a professional archivist. The first bounty of their labor is Ready Take One—previously unknown studio recordings of Garner and his trio from 1967–71.

Tonight (Tuesday, November 8), at the Jazz Standard in New York City (116 East 27th Street), the 7:30 set, along with Brooke Gladstone (co-host & managing editor of public radio's On the Media and, as it happens, my wife), I'll be announcing election updates and analyzing results between tunes (by Ted Nash's Presidential Suite big band).