And Now, On Tenor Sax, We Bring You the Great Booker Erwin
Did you know that Booker Erwin is the tenor sax player on the album Mingus Ah Um? Or that it is the tenor saxophone that Sonny Stitt plays on the album Saxophone Supremacy? Or that John Coltrane wrote the song Afro Blue on the Impulse album Live at Birdland? I didn’t know any of this because none of it is true. Except that’s what it says in the liner notes or on the labels. In the process of doing my weekly two-hour radio show/podcast I’m discovering a surprisingly large number of typos and misinformation on liner notes. I was playing the Verve Dizzy Gillespie album Sonny Side Up with Sonny Rollins and Sonny Stitt. I looked at the liner notes for On the Sunny Side of the Street. It said quite clearly that Rollins has the opening solo and then Stitt has the solo after Dizzy. Listen to the record. Read more