"Jackie & The Bean Stalk" is a high-energy blues in C minor from Kenny Garrett's 1992 album Black Hope, featuring the alto saxophonist in full cry over an extended 24-bar blues form at a tempo pushing past 280 beats per minute. Garrett tears through nine exhilarating choruses, his alto saxophone lines displaying the rhythmic unpredictability and harmonic daring he honed during his tenure with Miles Davis's final bands. The playful title belies the intensity of the performance, which finds Garrett at his most ferociously creative. Kenny Kirkland contributes five choruses of piano improvisation that match the leader's fire, his percussive touch and angular melodic ideas creating a compelling contrast to Garrett's fluid alto lines. The rhythm section of Charnett Moffett on bass and Brian Blade on drums drives the performance with the kind of explosive energy that made this quartet one of the most exciting working bands of the early 1990s. The 24-bar blues form gives the soloists more harmonic territory to explore than a standard 12-bar blues, while the breakneck tempo demands extraordinary technical facility. "Jackie & The Bean Stalk" captures the combustible spirit that made Black Hope a landmark album in Garrett's career.
