The Book Cooks

Vinyl reissue of the classic 1961 debut album by the American jazz tenor saxophonist. Booker Ervin was one of jazz's biggest what-if's; he died young, at 39, from kidney disease, right as he was hitting another wave of sonic experiments. He was a tenor who played the blues like they emanated from deep inside him, taking inspiration from field hollers as much as bebop. He got compared to Coltrane - who made a lot of similar playing decisions - but he had a different way of playing his blues. The Book Cooks shows that Ervin arrived on the solo scene essentially fully formed; he'd change towards the end of the '60s, but this LP was a roadmap for him for the first part of his bandleader career.