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“Odessa” from the album “Lenox Avenue Breakdown”.

Lenox Avenue Breakdown is an album by jazz saxophonist Arthur Blythe. It was released by Columbia Records in 1979 and reissued by Koch Jazz in 1998. The album reached No. 35 on the Billboard Jazz Albums chart in 1979.

The Penguin Guide to Jazz included Lenox Avenue Breakdown in its “Core Collection,” and assigned its “crown” accolade to the album, along with a four-star rating (of a possible four stars).Penguin editors Richard Cook and Brian Morton called the album “one of the lost masterpieces of modern jazz,” owing to its long period of unavailability before the 1998 CD release. Cook and Morton noted that “[Bob] Stewart’s long tuba solo on the title-piece is one of the few genuinely important tuba statements in jazz, a nimble sermon that promises storms and sunshine.”

Thom Jurek, writing for allmusic, notes that “this group lays like a band that had been together for years, not the weeklong period it took them to rehearse and create one of Blythe’s masterpieces. Over 20 years later, Lenox Avenue Breakdown still sounds new and different and ranks among the three finest albums in his catalog. (Wikipedia)

Personnel:
Arthur Blythe – alto saxophone
James Newton – flute
Bob Stewart – tuba
James “Blood” Ulmer – guitar
Cecil McBee – bass
Jack DeJohnette – drums
Guillermo Franco – percussion