Harold Mabern - Straight Street (DIW, 1989)

This post is by Dan

Harold Mabern (p); Ron Carter (b); Jack DeJohnette (d)

Recorded December 11, 1989

Up until his death two years ago, Harold Mabern was one of the last surviving links to the peak years of jazz in the early 1960s. Although his individual recording career began in the late 60s with several Prestige albums, earlier he gigged and recorded with numerous luminaries on the scene, including Miles Davis, Lionel Hampton, Donald Byrd and many others. 

Straight Street began a series of exceptional trio albums with premier side men. The Leading Man (1993), Lookin' on the Bright Side (1993), and Mabern's Grooveyard (1997) followed Straight Street and together document a fertile period for Mabern. Thankfully, the Japanese DIW label partnered with Columbia to put these titles on the shelves of American record stores. 

With Ron Carter and Jack DeJohnette, Mabern briskly renders four originals, two Coltrane classics, and four others. They are, as album the title suggests, played in straight-ahead fashion without pretense. It's as a good a representation of piano trio jazz in the late 1980s as anything else I've heard. Mabern is in complete command, and his bandmates play their usual superb accompaniments. Clearly, one of the best albums to come out of the 1980s.