Prior to 1959, Jackie McLean was an important young Turk whose sharp tone and intense style on alto grew out of Charlie Parker yet were very much his own. Growing up in New York, his neighbors included such friends as Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins. By 1951 he was recording with Miles Davis and other associations in the 1950s included Charles Mingus and two years with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. But all of that was a prelude to his recording 21 brilliant, explorative and frequently explosive albums for Blue Note during 1959-67. While McLean became one of the first jazz musicians of his generation to stretch beyond hard bop into freer explorations inspired by Ornette Coleman, Swing, Swang, Swingin' is a straight ahead affair in which he mostly puts his stamp on standards. Few versions of "Let's Face The Music And Dance" and "I Love You" have ever had this much intensity and, when McLean digs into the ballad "What's New," he gives it a fiery passion that had never been heard before. Jackie McLean not only swings and swangs but he burns with the urgency, agony and ecstasy of the 1960s.
