Plus Four cover

Plus Four

Released

This five-track, 32-minute album is secretly a Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet session, recorded in March 1956, only three months before Brown and pianist Richie Powell’s deaths. It was released under Rollins’ name for business reasons, and in fact it sounds different from the work they did on all their other records. It begins with a Rollins original, the waltz “Valse Hot,” and ends with another of his pieces, the burning “Pent-Up House.” In between are versions of three show tunes — “Kiss and Run,” “I Feel a Song Coming On,” and “Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep)” — each given a unique spin, as in the melodic trade-offs between trumpet and tenor sax on “Kiss and Run” or the romantic swing of “Count Your Blessings,” on which Brown steps away.

Phil Freeman

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