January/February 2005

Dizzy Gillespie
Salt Peanuts
Just a Memory

By Harvey Siders

For Gillespie's Salt Peanuts (Just a Memory), a live session from the Rising Sun Celebrity Jazz Club, in Montreal, 1981, four hours of previously unreleased material was reduced to these eight tracks. The pianoless quintet swings with intensity throughout, especially on the Mach 3 title track, relieved only by Gillespie's irresistible humorous vocals on "Swing Low Sweet Cadillac" and "Land of Milk and Honey" and Sayyd Abdul Al-Khabyyr's delicate flute solo on "The Girl From Ipanema." Diz offers an excellent muted solo on "On Green Dolphin Street" and screeches into the stratosphere on his best open solo, "A Night in Tunisia." Without piano, guitarist Ed Cherry gets plenty of stretch-out room, and his best moments come on "Tunisia." Bassist Mike Howell and drummer Tommy Campbell keep the combo in a high state of excitement and contribute first-rate solos.