Released in 1959, Anne Phillips’ debut album takes listeners on a journey through the melancholic twilights of a bygone New York City, one that you can only find in bar-stool memories of young love and innocence lost. If there ever was an album for the wee small hours of the morning, it’s Phillips’ Born To Be Blue.
Category: Midnite Jazz
At Ease With Coleman Hawkins (1960)
At Ease With Coleman Hawkins is jazz for way past midnight, when ties are loosened and heels are kicked off; when the twilight glow of last night and tomorrow morning ooze into a hazy, pastel hue of here and now.
Gerry Mulligan :: Night Lights (1963)
Recorded over two sessions in the fall of 1962 at Nola Penthouse Studios in New York City, Night Lights finds Gerry Mulligan exploring the somber side of cool jazz, playing originals and standards with a no-frills approach.
John Coltrane And Johnny Hartman (1963)
Turning 60 this year, Coltrane and Hartman is essential listening not just for jazz aficionados, but hopeless romantics far and wide. The smokey mood of the record eclipses its genre, belonging more to an ethereal wavelength of nocturnal ambiance than musical categorization.
Ahmad Jamal’s Alhambra (1961)
What makes Ahmad Jamal’s Alhambra so salient – so casually charming and endearing – is that it belongs to a singular night. It’s not only a live performance, but a sonic documentation of an evening spent at the Alhambra in Chicago.