Jimmy Forrest with Shirley Scott – Heart of the Forrest (Palo Alto/Muse, 1982)

Jimmy Forrest (ts); Shirley Scott (org); Randy Marsh (d)

Recorded on December 28, 1978

After working together in Count Basie's Orchestra, Jimmy Forrest and Al Grey formed a band with Shirley Scott.  Somewhat surprisingly, Scott usually played piano with Forrest and Grey rather than organ, the instrument upon which her reputation was built.

Happily, in the case of this recording, Shirley Scott returns to the organ (for the most part).  And one wonders if Al Grey had gone home for the holidays, since he's not present.  Instead, the band is pared down to a classic configuration: the tenor-organ-drums combo.  

Forrest is most well-known for his 1952 number one R&B hit record, "Night Train," a song he lifted from the Ellington songbook, where it was known as "Happy Go Lucky Local."  Forrest revisits the song on this set -- even though he apparently came to detest it after playing it every night for so many years.

Forrest died just eight months after this recording was made.  It was released posthumously by his widow, initially on the Palo Alto Jazz label and subsequently on Muse.  But it's a special album.  It's a testament to a certain kind of jazz -- maybe even an artistic sensibility -- that was already beginning to vanish by the end of the decade.