By 1978, the staid, musty jazz guitar idiom received a much needed jolt. Pat Metheny’s debut Bright Size Life had revitalized the form just a few years prior and Bill Frisell’s early ECM sessions were starting to receive notice (and Steve Tibbetts wasn’t too far behind). Within a few years, the form would be remade wholly in their electric images. So you could be forgiven at the time for ignoring Windflower, a session cut by Herb Ellis and Remo Palmieri, two longtime sidemen whose cool post-bop stylings had long since gone cold. Thanks in no small part to the YouTube algorithm, Windflower bloomed anew in the 21st century. Loosed from the relentless churn of history, this date received a vinyl reissue in 2022. Perhaps it now serves as background for “vibes,” but it speaks to the reassessment of history and canon. In fact, the original date attempted to do just that.

Ellis and Palmieri met amid the bustle of jazz’s beating heart, 52nd Street, in the 1940s. A teen from the Bronx whose approach to guitar reflected that of his idol, Coleman Hawkins, Palmieri instantly caught Ellis’s ear. Ellis went on to gigs with Jimmy Dorsey, Oscar Peterson, and Ella Fitzgerald, recording extensively for the next three decades. Palmieri found himself backing Billie Holiday, but due to health issues, he barely made it into a studio. At the verge of anonymity, Ellis sought him out in 1977 and made it a point to finally get Palimieri into the studio. Palmieri picks the tunes (leaning heavily on the American songbook “The Night has a Thousand Eyes,” “My Foolish Heart”). Yet the two move like swifts at dusk, darting and swooping in and around one another with aplomb. They are nimble and joyous for this take on Jobim’s “Triste” and deliver one of the more heart-rending reads of “Danny Boy” you’ll ever hear. It didn’t reinvent jazz guitar, but it more than makes up for it as a masterclass in nonchalance.