Enjoy the View (feat. Billy Hart)

Part of Blue Note’s 75th-anniversary celebration, Enjoy the View features Hutcherson—one of the label’s stalwart artists from the ‘60s and ‘70s—as well as some very heavy company. The much-celebrated David Sanborn has been leaning more toward straight jazz and old-school R&B in recent years, often with organist DeFrancesco providing plenty of heat. Add the august Hart on drums to the mix, and you have a quartet of savvy veterans who are each comfortable in any situation. Refreshingly, the quartet here eschew standards or covers in favor of originals from everyone but Hart. Sanborn’s noir-ish “Delia” and DeFrancesco’s jaunty bop “Don Is” give the listener a sense of the fertile and free-ranging common ground the quartet occupies. Elsewhere, the groove is positively greasy on Hutcherson’s “Teddy” with DeFrancesco and Sanborn both going deep, and the dreamy “Little Flower” shimmers in ballad mode. Sometimes things don’t go as well as they were drawn up on paper; that definitely isn't the case here.