Afro Blue - Harold Mabern

Afro Blue is pianist Harold Mabern's album for Smoke Sessions Records, released in 2015. The album features a core group of Eric Alexander on tenor saxophone, Jeremy Pelt on trumpet, Peter Bernstein on guitar, John Webber on bass, and Joe Farnsworth on drums, with guest vocalists Gregory Porter and Kurt Elling appearing on select tracks. The thirteen-track program mixes standards like "Fools Rush In," "I'll Take Romance," and "My One and Only Love" with Mabern originals including "The Chief," "Bobby, Benny, Jymie, Lee, Bu" — a tribute to fellow Memphis musicians — and "The Man from Hyde Park." Mongo Santamaria's "Afro Blue," which became a jazz standard after John Coltrane recorded it, provides the album's title. Mabern, who was in his early eighties when this was recorded, plays with the blues-drenched, hard-swinging approach he developed over a career stretching back to the 1960s, when he worked with Lee Morgan, Hank Mobley, and Wes Montgomery. Alexander's robust tenor and Pelt's bright trumpet carry the front line, while Bernstein's guitar adds harmonic depth. The Smoke Sessions recordings, produced by Paul Stache and Damon Smith, captured Mabern in a late-career resurgence that produced several acclaimed albums before his death in 2019.