Landmark Jazz Album 24: The Modern Jazz Quartet - Fontessa (Atlantic)

John Lewis (p), Milt Jackson (vb), Percy Heath (b) and Connie Kay (d). Rec. 1956

It’s difficult at this distance, with so much noise and fury intervening, to credit the radicalism of John Lewis’ brief for the Modern Jazz Quartet, but back in 1956 they were doing stunningly new things in jazz in just about every musical area – form, content, arrangement, interplay and theory. They also had a secret weapon in that all four musicians were steeped in the blues and could wail whenever they needed to, thus obviating any tendency to effete noodling when things got a little formal. Fontessa was their first for Atlantic with the fully integrated line-up including Connie Kay: it delivered a perfect blueprint for the many MJQ advances of the next decade.

Credits: KS