This may be Freddie Hubbard's finest moment as a leader, in that it embodies and utilizes all of his strengths as a composer, soloist, and frontman. On Red Clay, Hubbard combines hard bop's glorious blues-out past with the soulful innovations of mainstream jazz in the 1960s, and reads them through the chunky groove innovations of '70s jazz fusion. This session places the trumpeter in the company of giants such as tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Lenny White. Hubbard's five compositions all come from deep inside blues territory; these shaded notions are grafted onto funky hard bop melodies worthy of Horace Silver's finest tunes, and are layered inside the smoothed-over cadences of shimmering, steaming soul. The 12-minute-plus title track features a 4/4 modal opening and a spare electric piano solo woven through the twin horns of Hubbard and Henderson. It is a fine example of snaky groove music. Henderson even takes his solo outside a bit without ever moving out of the rhythmatist's pocket. "Delphia" begins as a ballad with slow, clipped trumpet lines against a major-key background, and opens onto a midtempo groover, then winds back into the dark, steamy heart of bluesy melodicism. The hands-down favorite here, though, is "The Intrepid Fox," with its Miles-like opening of knotty changes and shifting modes, that are all rooted in bop's muscular architecture. It's White and Hancock who shift the track from underneath with large sevenths and triple-timed drums that land deeply inside the clamoring, ever-present riff. Where Hubbard and Henderson are playing against, as well as with one another, the rhythm section, lifted buoyantly by Carter's bridge-building bassline, carries the melody over until Hancock plays an uncharacteristically angular solo before splitting the groove in two and doubling back with a series of striking arpeggios. This is a classic, hands down.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Recorded during their American tour in late 1969 and centered around live versions of material from the Beggars Banquet-Let It Bleed era, Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! is often acclaimed as one of the top live rock albums of all time, although its appeal has dimmed a little today. The live versions are reasonably different from the studio ones, but ultimately not as good, a notable exception being the long workout of "Midnight Rambler," with extended harmonica solos and the unforgettable section where the pace slows to a bump-and-grind crawl. Some Stones aficionados, in fact, prefer a bootleg from the same tour (Liver Than You'll Ever Be, to which this album was unleashed in response), or their amazing the-show-must-go-on performance in the jaws of hell at Altamont (preserved in the Gimme Shelter film). Fans who are unconcerned with picky comparisons such as these will still find Ya-Ya's an outstanding album, and it's certainly the Stones' best official live recording.© Richie Unterberger /TiVo

Billed as both a Barbra Streisand album and as an original motion picture soundtrack, Yentl contains the songs, sung by Streisand and written by Michel Legrand and Alan and Marilyn Bergman, that the character played by Streisand sings as internal monologues in the film, sometimes with spoken dialogue interspersed. (The album is filled out by "studio versions" of two of the songs, "The Way He Makes Me Feel" and "No Matter What Happens," played on contemporary electronic instruments, rather than in the orchestral settings used for the rest of the songs.) With such a thematic base, the music has an unusual consistency, and written specifically for Streisand, it makes use of her emotional expressiveness, phrasing, and timing as a singer. But it was also written as a complement to the film and on its own comes across as a group of isolated musical plot highlights rather than as a coherent song cycle. (Yentl won an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score.)© William Ruhlmann /TiVo

Recorded in 1970 at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in New Jersey under the production auspices of Creed Taylor, the arrangement and conducting skills of Deodato, and the engineering expertise of Van Gelder himself, Antonio Carlos Jobim's Stone Flower is quite simply one of his most quietly stunning works -- and certainly the high point of his time at Columbia. Nearly a decade after the paint peeled from the shine of bossa nova's domination of both pop and jazz charts in the early '60s, Creed Taylor brought Jobim's tender hush of the bossa sound back into the limelight. With a band that included both Jobim and Deodato on guitars (Jobim also plays piano and sings in a couple of spots), Ron Carter on bass, Joao Palma on drums, Airto Moreira and Everaldo Ferreira on percussion, Urbie Green on trombone, Joe Farrell on soprano saxophone, and Hubert Lookofsky laying down a soulful violin solo on the title track, Jobim created his own version of Kind of Blue. The set opens with the low, simmering "Tereza My Love," with its hushed, elongated trombone lines and shifting acoustic guitars floating on the evening breeze. It begins intimately and ends with a closeness that is almost uncomfortably sensual, even for bossa nova. And then there are the slippery piano melodies Jobim lets roll off his fingers against a backdrop of gauzy strings and syncopated rhythms in both "Choro" and "Brazil." The latter is a samba tune with a sprightly tempo brought to the fore by Jobim's sandy, smoky vocal hovering ghost-like about the instrumental shimmer in the mix. Take, for instance, the title track -- with its stuttered, near-imperceptible percussion laid under a Jobim piano melody of such simplicity, it's harmonically deceptive. It isn't until Lookofsky enters for his solo that you realize just how sophisticated and dense both rhythm and the chromatic lyricism are. The album closes with a reprise of "Brazil," restating a theme that has, surprisingly, been touched upon in every track since the original inception, making most of the disc a suite that is a lush, sense-altering meditation, on not only Jobim's music and the portraits it paints, but the sounds employed by Taylor to achieve this effect. Stone Flower is simply brilliant, a velvety, late-night snapshot of Jobim at his peak. [The 2002 reissue adds an alternate take of "Brazil" as a bonus track.]© TiVo

For George Benson's second CTI project, producer Creed Taylor and arranger Don Sebesky successfully place the guitarist in a Spanish-flavored setting full of flamenco flourishes, brass fanfares, moody woodwinds and such. The idea works best on "California Dreamin'" (whose chords are based on Andalusian harmonies), where, driven by Jay Berliner's exciting Spanish rhythm guitar, Benson comes through with some terrifically inspired playing. On "El Mar," Berliner is replaced by Benson's protégé Earl Klugh (then only 17) in an inauspicious -- though at the time, widely-heralded -- recorded debut. The title track is another winner, marred only by the out-of-tune brasses at the close, and in a good example of the CTI classical/jazz formula at work, Heitor Villa-Lobos' "Little Train of the Caipira" is given an attractive early-'70s facelift. Herbie Hancock gets plenty of nimble solo space on Rhodes electric piano, Airto Moreira contributes percussion and atmospheric wordless vocals, and Ron Carter and Billy Cobham complete the high-energy rhythm section. In this prime sample of the CTI idiom, everyone wins.© Richard S. Ginell /TiVo

Recorded during their American tour in late 1969 and centered around live versions of material from the Beggars Banquet-Let It Bleed era, Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! is often acclaimed as one of the top live rock albums of all time, although its appeal has dimmed a little today. The live versions are reasonably different from the studio ones, but ultimately not as good, a notable exception being the long workout of "Midnight Rambler," with extended harmonica solos and the unforgettable section where the pace slows to a bump-and-grind crawl. Some Stones aficionados, in fact, prefer a bootleg from the same tour (Liver Than You'll Ever Be, to which this album was unleashed in response), or their amazing the-show-must-go-on performance in the jaws of hell at Altamont (preserved in the Gimme Shelter film). Fans who are unconcerned with picky comparisons such as these will still find Ya-Ya's an outstanding album, and it's certainly the Stones' best official live recording.© Richie Unterberger /TiVo

Guitarist Jim Hall is the sort of musician who displays such technical expertise, imaginative conception, and elegance of line and phrase that almost any recording of his is worth hearing. Still, Concierto ranks among the best albums of his superb catalog. For starters, the personnel here is a jazz lover's dream come true. Paul Desmond (saxophone), Chet Baker (trumpet), Roland Hanna (piano), Ron Carter (bass), and Steve Gadd (drums) are on board, creating -- along with Hall -- one of the highest profile lineups ever put to tape. Yet Concierto is not about star power and showboating. As subtle, nuanced, and considered as any of Hall's output, the ensemble playing here demonstrates great group sensitivity and interplay, giving precedence to mood and atmosphere over powerhouse soloing. Conductor and arranger Don Sebesky evinces a chamber ambience from the sextet on "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To," the smoky "The Answer Is Yes," and the Hall centerpiece "Concierto de Aranjuez."© Anthony Tognazzini /TiVo

Baker began his comeback after five years of musical inactivity with this excellent CTI date. Highlights include "Autumn Leaves," "Tangerine," and "With a Song in My Heart." Altoist Paul Desmond is a major asset on two songs and the occasional strings give variety to this fine session.© Scott Yanow /TiVo

With the Skylark "experiment" behind him, Paul Desmond reverted back to the relaxed quartet format that suited him well in the past. The reason? Through Jim Hall, he found a little-known, splendid guitarist in Toronto named Ed Bickert who became his new gigmate in 1974, and this album was meant to show his discovery off. In fact, it sparked a Desmond renaissance where he regained a good deal of the witty spark and erudite cool of his collaborations with Hall, no matter how unfashionable it was to play this way in 1974. Bickert is an even more reticent player than Hall, softer in touch and temperament, but eminently musical, enough to fire up Desmond's creativity. Old Desmond hand Connie Kay lends sympathy and comfort on drums, and Ron Carter is on bass. "Just Squeeze Me," "Everything I Love," and "Til the Clouds Roll By" are the best examples of the empathy at work here but any track will do.© Richard S. Ginell /TiVo