CiTR

Tonight and throughout the month of November The Jazz Show throws the spotlight on obscure, underrated and under recorded trumpeters. All are master musicians but for a variety of reasons, none got the recognition they so richly deserved. In the case of tonight's the wonderful Wilbur Harden , it was a case of his career being curtailed by ill heath both mental and physical. He had recorded with the great Yusef Lateef and John Coltrane and was held in very high esteem. He signed with Savoy Records in 1958 and recorded four wonderful dates, two of which make up tonight's Jazz Feature. Wilbur appears on flugelhorn, his preferred horn with the mighty John Coltrane, trombonist Curtis Fuller, pianists Howard Williams and Tommy Flanagan (splitting the chores), bassist Alvin (aka Ali) Jackson and drum great Arthur Taylor. These two recordings were done in June of 1958 and first issued separately on two LPs. We hear them both tonight. Wilbur Harden wrote four of the seven tunes and Curtis Fuller wrote two and the ballad feature is the old standard "Once in a While". Wilbur made his final record in 1960 and sadly died in obscurity in 1969 at age 44. Hear him at his best tonight!