music.wikisort.org - Composition

Sweet Honey Bee is an album by American jazz pianist and composer Duke Pearson, released on the Blue Note label in 1967.[3] The woman on the cover was Pearson's fiancee Betty.[4]

Sweet Honey Bee
Studio album by Duke Pearson
Released	1967
Recorded	December 7, 1966
Studio	Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
Genre	Jazz
Length	39:27
Label	Blue Note BST 84252
Producer	Alfred Lion
Duke Pearson chronology
Prairie Dog (1966) Sweet Honey Bee (1967) The Right Touch (1967)

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[1]
The Penguin Guide to Jazz	[2]

Reception

Allmusic awarded the album with 4 stars and its review by Scott Yanow states: "Pianist/composer Duke Pearson leads an all-star group on this run-through of seven of his compositions. The musicians (trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, altoist James Spaulding, Joe Henderson on tenor, bassist Ron Carter, drummer Mickey Roker, and the pianist/leader) are actually more impressive than many of the compositions, although the swinging minor-toned "Big Bertha" deserved to become a standard."[5] The Penguin Guide review says: "the highlights are the lushly voiced melodies of 'Sudel' and 'Gaslight', the former a tune which Pearson had recorded some years earlier with a different group. Hubbard and Henderson eat up their solo opportunities without sundering the essentially easy-going feel which was [a] Pearson trademark, and while not all the material is up to this standard, as a showcase for the pianist as writer and group-leader, this is surely the best thing available at present [2004]."[2]

Popular culture

In David Mitchell's novel Ghostwritten, Satoru, a young Japanese jazz-lover working in a record shop in Tokyo, says of a girl who comes into the store, "if you know Duke Pearson's 'After the Rain,' well, she was as beautiful and pure as that."[6]

Track listing

All compositions by Duke Pearson except where noted.

1. "Sweet Honey Bee" – 5:00
2. "Sudel" – 5:43
3. "After the Rain" – 4:45
4. "Gaslight" – 6:01
5. "Big Bertha" (Peter Chatman, Pearson) – 5:58
6. "Empathy" – 6:00
7. "Ready Rudy?" – 6:01

Personnel

• Duke Pearson – piano
• Joe Henderson – tenor saxophone
• Freddie Hubbard – trumpet
• James Spaulding – flute, alto saxophone
• Ron Carter – bass
• Mickey Roker – drums

References

---