Genre: jazz
Rating: 2 stars **
Title: The Love I've Been Looking for
Company: Atlantic
Catalog: SD
1585
Year: 1971
Country/State: Chicago, Illinois
Grade (cover/record): VG / VG
Comments: cut top right corner
Available: 1
GEMM catalog ID: 5654
Price: $20.00
I'll readily admit that jazz is not a major area of interest to me - I'm simply not sophisticated enough to enjoy the subtleties of the genre. I'll also readily admit I bought this one at a yard sale thinking it was a soul group ... Sometimes you guess right and sometimes you're wrong.
Turns out sax player Clarence Wheeler and his band The Enforcers (keyboardist Sonny Burke, trumpet player Sonny Covington, and drummer George Hughes) were a well known Chicago jazz quartet. On this, their second album "The Love I've Been Looking For" they were joined by guitarist Eric Gale. Produced by Joel Dorn, these seven instrumentals offered up a mixture of pop covers (Beatles and The Carpenters) and more jazzy material (Jack McDuff). The focus was clearly on the combination of Wheeler's sax and Burke's keyboards and the results were probably quite good if you were into the soul-jazz genre. That said, to my ears this stuff came off as being pretty cocktail jazzy. Professional, but pedestrian - kind of a nice rainy Sunday morning type of background material. There was one exception to those comments. Kicked along by some nice lead guitar from Gale, 'Broasted or Fried' exhibited a surprisingly funk edge which left you to wonder what these guys could have done had they opted for a change in musical direction.
"The Love
I've Been Looking For" track listing:
(side 1)
1.) Mighty Burner (Charles Earland - Leon Fisher) (instrumental) - 6:57
2.) The Heebie Jeebie Dance (instrumental) (Jack McDuff) - 9:31
3.) Something (instrumental) (George Harrison) - 4:22
(side
2)
1.) The Love I've Been Looking For (instrumental)
(Ernest Shelby - Willie Cooper - Clarence Pauling) - 5:43
2.) Broasted or Fried (instrumental) (Reginald Andrews) - 4:12
3.) We've Only Just Begun (instrumental) (Roger Nichols - Paul Williams) - 4:51
4.) Hey Western Union Man (instrumental) (Kenny Gamble - Leon Huff - Jerry Butler) - 3:10