How many albums is “a lot of albums”? Not to own, I mean—I’ve got around a hundred LPs, a number which most collectors would consider laughable. What I’m asking is how many full-length records must one make, before observers might observe, “That’s a lot of albums!” I guess it depends who you ask—Syd Lawrence managed about fifteen during his five-decade career, while Duke Ellington got to around two hundred.
Harry Allen’s body of work fits somewhere between these two, comprising around seventy discs as bandleader and dozens more as a sideman. Inducted into SOKA University of America’s Jazz Monsters Hall of Fame in 2020, the prolific saxophonist, arranger and producer from Washington D.C. has somehow found time in his busy recording schedule to tour worldwide, winning awards from jazz critics everywhere from New York to Tokyo.
But now his star has truly risen, for he finds himself at long last on my radar (he said, with tongue firmly in cheek). Much of Allen’s work has paid homage to the old masters—see Milo’s Illinois for instance, in which he and bassist Mike Karn revisit the eponymous Jaquet’s discography, or Under a Blanket of Blue, which reinterprets ten standards as tender sax/guitar duets—but the larger part has comprised original compositions, drawing inspiration from the kings of swing and bebop.
New record With Roses boasts ten such tracks, t
