About

Roy Haynes was just about everywhere in the golden age of jazz, recording classic albums with some of the most legendary names of the genre: Miles, Coltrane, Monk, Bud Powell, Sarah Vaughan, Sonny Rollins, Eric Dolphy, Milt Jackson, McCoy Tyner and Jackie McLean. During this time he didn't record extensively as a leader, but he did produce two outstanding albums under his own name, the trio outing We Three (with Phineas Newborn and Paul Chambers) and the hard-bop-verging-on-post-bop Out Of The Afternoon, an excellent example of the adventurous spirit that was taking flight in the jazz world in the early 1960s.

How Haynes managed to hook up with Roland Kirk for Out Of The Afternoon is anyone's guess (as far as I can tell they didn't record together elsewhere, and Kirk did not make very many appearances as a sideman), but in any case when they stepped into the studio in May of 1962 the result was an exciting album that remains criminally under-appreciated despite the outstanding contributions of the all the players present. Tommy Flanagan shines on the piano, his delicate touch the perfect complement to Kirk and Haynes. Flanagan, like Haynes, seemed to have recorded with just about everyone in the '50s and '60s, and he may not be the first hard bop pianist that comes to mind when listing the greats, but he certainly had a serious impact on modern jazz as we know it, appearing on such classics as Giant Steps, Saxophone Colossus and Blues-Ette. – TheJazzRecord.com