The George Shearing Quintet “Classic Shearing”

Sure it’s a 1966 compilation record, but it’s a good one, at least for my money, and I’d confidently tell a “Shearing-less” friend that if you were going to have only one Shearing LP in your collection (heaven forbid) that you could do worse than this one! Are they recordings from records I have? I’m not going to do the research—they all sound familiar, but maybe that’s just me—nothing in the world—that’s round and has grooves—sounds, to me, more familiar than The George Shearing Quintet. Apparently, this LP is part of a series put out by Verve/VSP—there are “thumbnail” (1 ½ square/big thumb!) pictures, on the back cover, of 18 collections of jazz legends—this being No. 9—each with similar cover art—some kind of stylized, abstract, illustration. The art on this one (by Jon Henry) looks like a cut paper collage arranged on a black diamond shape; if one was going to recognize objects in the abstract forms, I’d list various fruits and vegetables and a big fish. And because the title font is a dead-ringer for “Cookbook Font,” you might get confused and look inside for a bouillabaisse recipe. Somewhat appropriate, because this record cooks! Including: “Good to the Last Bop,” “Brain Wave,” and “Rap Your Troubles in Drums.” There are recordings from 1949 to 1964, but it doesn’t sound like a retrospective, but rather a hot band from down the street, tonight (if you’re lucky), and the variety of personnel amazingly sounds like a single vision, if not a single combo (with maybe the exception the one time ever I’ve heard accordion on a Shearing record). Other rarities, accordion to the liner notes—a song called “For Evans Sake”—released here for the first time. Sure, the record is long on puns (and short on minutes, sadly)—but there are two types of people, those who find this music cornball, and those who find it sublime—guess where I stand.

9.26.25