About
Rickey Woodard leads with four choruses of tenor saxophone on "Just Friends" at approximately 170 BPM, a model of blues-inflected mainstream jazz improvisation on his 1992 live album The Tokyo Express. His robust tone and rhythmic authority over the 32-bar ABAC form in F recall the great tradition of Charlie Parker's definitive recording of this standard, while situating the tune firmly within the swing-to-bop continuum that defines Woodard's musical identity. As the first of three soloists, his four-chorus statement establishes the performance's swinging energy, the live Tokyo recording capturing the natural interplay among four accomplished musicians feeding off each other's ideas.
Rickey Woodard was 41 to 42 years old at the time.
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