Sweet Honey Bee is an album by American jazz pianist and composer
Duke Pearson, released on the
Blue Note label in 1967.[3] The woman on the cover was Pearson's fiancee Betty.[4]
Reception
Allmusic awarded the album with 4 stars and its review by Scott Yanow states: "Pianist/composer Duke Pearson leads an all-star group on this run-through of seven of his compositions. The musicians (trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, altoist James Spaulding, Joe Henderson on tenor, bassist Ron Carter, drummer Mickey Roker, and the pianist/leader) are actually more impressive than many of the compositions, although the swinging minor-toned "Big Bertha" deserved to become a standard."[5] The Penguin Guide review says: "the highlights are the lushly voiced melodies of 'Sudel' and 'Gaslight', the former a tune which Pearson had recorded some years earlier with a different group. Hubbard and Henderson eat up their solo opportunities without sundering the essentially easy-going feel which was [a] Pearson trademark, and while not all the material is up to this standard, as a showcase for the pianist as writer and group-leader, this is surely the best thing available at present [2004]."[2]
Popular culture
In
David Mitchell's novel Ghostwritten, Satoru, a young Japanese jazz-lover working in a record shop in Tokyo, says of a girl who comes into the store, "if you know Duke Pearson's 'After the Rain,' well, she was as beautiful and pure as that."[6]
Sweet Honey Bee is an album by American jazz pianist and composer
Duke Pearson, released on the
Blue Note label in 1967.[3] The woman on the cover was Pearson's fiancee Betty.[4]
Reception
Allmusic awarded the album with 4 stars and its review by Scott Yanow states: "Pianist/composer Duke Pearson leads an all-star group on this run-through of seven of his compositions. The musicians (trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, altoist James Spaulding, Joe Henderson on tenor, bassist Ron Carter, drummer Mickey Roker, and the pianist/leader) are actually more impressive than many of the compositions, although the swinging minor-toned "Big Bertha" deserved to become a standard."[5] The Penguin Guide review says: "the highlights are the lushly voiced melodies of 'Sudel' and 'Gaslight', the former a tune which Pearson had recorded some years earlier with a different group. Hubbard and Henderson eat up their solo opportunities without sundering the essentially easy-going feel which was [a] Pearson trademark, and while not all the material is up to this standard, as a showcase for the pianist as writer and group-leader, this is surely the best thing available at present [2004]."[2]
Popular culture
In
David Mitchell's novel Ghostwritten, Satoru, a young Japanese jazz-lover working in a record shop in Tokyo, says of a girl who comes into the store, "if you know Duke Pearson's 'After the Rain,' well, she was as beautiful and pure as that."[6]