jimmy lyons - wee sneezawee

i bought this record when i was about 19 years old, lets say 1998. the cat's meow was a jazz record store in eugene. for the most part the guys that worked there were snobby and unhappy, the types that would only recommend bill evans (don't get me wrong i love bill evans) or something that sounded like you should be in a hot tub when you listen to it. here's the nice way of putting it: they catered to the mainstream. they went out of business.

around that time they had decided to stop carrying vinyl. so all the records they had were 40% off. there was a lot of cool stuff in there. actually, i got quite lucky: little did i know how difficult it was going to become to find things on inner city or black saint in the future. and this is the vinyl they had; the leftovers from the 80's.

a lot of music from this time period is terribly overlooked. jimmy lyons' album wee sneezawee (on black saint, out of milano) is one of these records. an all time favorite of mine, it boasts incredible personnel. here is an early appearance by william parker, who could easily be considered one of the most exciting bass players of today - if not ever. bassoon is played by karen borca, and this is my favorite aspect of the record. listen to her and you'll see what i mean.

jimmy lyons is usually associated with cecil taylor. over time he's appeared on quite a number of cecil's albums - from the the 1962 montmarte recordings and the1966 blue note classic "unit structures" to 1985's "winged serpent (sliding quadrants)."

get wee sneezawee here