Houston Person - Rain of Shine

With his long-time friend and colleague, cornetist Warren Vache and guitarist Rodney Jones, Houston Person's burnished sophistication, assured elegance and poise are again on display giving listeners an object lesson in unfussy, no-gimmicks music-making.

The soulfully expressive tenor saxophonist, Houston Person learned his craft in the 1950s, a time when some of the earliest pioneers of jazz saxophone - Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Ben Webster - were playing. Like Sonny Rollins and a handful of others, Person is a communicative musician who is rooted in traditional blues, church music, the American Songbook and the mimicking of a singer's tonal palette and phrasing. His blues feel led to a renaissance among acid-jazz clubbers in the 1990s, and his sound has become uniquely his own: an idiosyncratic edit of all he has learned, expressed in shrugging hoots, briefly cantering bop sprints, spacious and softly blown ballads.

Personnel: Houston Person (tenor saxophone), Warren Vache (cornet), Lafayette Harris (piano), Rodney Jones (guitar), Matthew Parrish (bass), Vincent Ector (drums)