Kenneth “Jethro” Burns: The Puritan Sessions featuring Keith Coleman (Freeland)
Kenneth “Jethro” Burns: Bye Bye Blues–Last Sessions, Volume 2 (Acoustic Disc)
No modern master of the mandolin, regardless of style, has avoided the influence of Kenneth “Jethro” Burns. The funny thing is that most of the record-buying public that made the Homer & Jethro comedy albums best-sellers in the 1950s and ’60s had no idea that “Jethro” was not only a great comic, but a jazz pioneer with a pick. These two discs contain a treasure trove of newly-released Burns, recorded at the beginning and end of a renaissance of appreciation for his genius. Besides featuring inspired playing from Burns, who lived from 1920 to 1989, and swing fiddler Keith Coleman, who died in 1977 at age 49, the main value of the Puritan sessions is the motherlode of Burns compositions, and even if the supporting players are not as polished as the Nashville hotshots to which Burns was accustomed when Chet Atkins was assembling his Nashville album dates in the preceding decades, these 1975 recordings will not disappoint fans of string jazz. However, the “Bye Bye Blues” duo performances with Burns’ mandolin protege, Don Stiernberg, here playing rock-solid and swinging rhythm guitar, are something altogether special. Like Art Tatum’s final solo sessions for Pablo, these glistening musical gems, made in Burns’ Evanston home not long before he died, find the giant in full flight, relaxed, playing the songs he wanted to play, with no eye on a studio clock nor concern for creating a marketable “product.” They represent a fitting finale to an extraordinary career.
