Jack Wilkins

Until It’s Time MaxJazz ****
Despite decades at the top table (Mingus,The Breckers, Buddy Rich, Phil Woods), Wilkins is another gifted player who gets less than his due. Yet he’s one of the great mainstream guitarists, with abundant ideas, awesome technique and compulsive swing. Reinforcing those qualities, on a blowing session into which much thought has clearly gone, is a crisply powerful Jon Cowherd- Steve LaSpina-Mark Ferber rhythm section. The shrewdly chosen repertoire is transformed; from the potentially unpromising Show Me and Für Elise(!) to Rollins’s Airegin , a Tico Tico taken far faster than Grant Green’s, Johnny Smith’s Walk Don’t Run (with a nice touch of homage) and pieces by Bacharach, James Taylor, Mancini and Buffy Sainte-Marie, for example. And, sparked by the guitarist’s brio, they’re all carried off with a communal joy in playing that’s irresistible. www.maxjazz.com