Title: Good stuff!
Review: Volume 2 pulls together two sessions, one with Wynton Kelly, Charles Mingus, Kenny Clarke, and Sabu Martinez, and another with Hank Mobley, Horace Silver, Paul Chambers, and Kenny Clarke. The first session is better than the second, but the album overall is very good. It's mainstream bebop from 1954 & 1955, 4-minute long songs, melody-solo-melody. What pulls everything together is Johnson's superb trombone playing. 8 of the 13 songs are standards, the others are by J.J. Johnson. Johnson's writing is pretty good, the standards are just more likely to be a ballad. Johnson has both technique and taste, the taste is on display on "Time After Time", and technique is shown in a fast one like "Coffee Pot".
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