In his skyrocketing but tragically brief career (his first album as a leader came in 1959; he died of a heart attack in 1968), Wes Montgomery completely revolutionized jazz guitar. But when first discovered, he was working in the basic guitar-organ-drums “bar band” format, and it remained a setting in which he always felt comfortable and creatively free. His first Riverside sessions and his last were in this vein, but the present album — a 1953 date on which he is joined by hometown colleague Mel Rhyne on organ and spurred by a peak performance from drummer Jimmy Cobb — is widely regarded as the most fully effective of its kind.
