
CP came through professionally in the 1940s, most notably with Dizzy Gillespie. Amongst scores of recordings, he’s on Randy Weston’s Uhuru Afrika, Kenny Dorham’s Afro Cuban, and Baritones And French Horns, with Trane. Here, leading a seriously distinguished lineup — Dorham, Albert Kuumba Heath, Wynton Kelly and Wilbur Ware, produced by Clifford Jordan — he naturally brings his own retrospective gravitas to the late-sixtes jazz ferment, underlined by his opening each side here with tributes: Martin Luther King, with its strongly Milesian lines, and Slide Hampton, featuring some scintillating piano work. Both Dorham and Kelly died between the recording and release of this album — which honours Eric Dolphy, also recently deceased — and the music itself poignantly hinges together different eras in jazz, proposing new paths forward in the tight funk of Girl, You Got A Home, and rollicking Carib jazz of Flying Fish, to close. No bells and whistles; just lovely stuff.