The Book Cooks

Reissue of the 1961 Classic debut album by the American Jazz tenor saxophonist. Booker Ervin was one of jazz’s biggest what-if’s; he died young, at 39, from kidney disease, right as he was hitting another wave of sonic experiments. He was a tenor who played the blues like they emanated from deep inside him, taking inspiration from field hollers as much as bebop.

He got compared to Coltrane--who made a lot of similar playing decisions--but he had a different way of playing his blues. His debut LP, The Book Cooks, shows he arrived on the solo scene essentially fully formed; he’d change towards the end of the ‘60s, but this LP was a roadmap for him for the first part of his bandleader career.