Lucky Thompson - Tricotism (Impulse)

There’s something of a cruel joke in Lucky Thompson’s sobriquet. Over three decades as an active influential musician and only a smattering of sides as a leader to show for it. This set is commonly touted as his finest hour and features him in two fruitful formats, one conventional, the other far less so. The eight sides placing Thompson’s ethereal tenor in the streamlined company of guitarist Skeeter Best and bassist Oscar Pettiford border on the transcendental. Bop bled through with pigments of insouciant swing, the pieces float by with such ease and accessibility that beauty and complexity of the improvisations comprising them almost seems secondary. The collection’s other eight sides highlight Thompson’s talents with a frontline partner. He and trombonist Jimmy Cleveland are kindred improvisers in terms of tone and phrasing, their melodic derivations spooling out in gilded ribbons against a pair of rhythm sections anchored by the sturdy constant of Pettiford’s strings. Hawkins and Young are obvious antecedents, but Thompson is hardly bound by his elders, his tenor achieving a superlative merging of weightlessness and profundity. The Impulse version of the collection remains lucklessly out of print though the freebooters over at the Spanish Fresh Sound imprint have found fit to circulate their own version. Hard to fault such an action when the object of their mercenary ways is music of this optimal caliber.