Straight Ahead (Oliver Nelson album)

Straight Ahead
Studio album by
Oliver Nelson
Released1961
RecordedMarch 1, 1961
StudioVan Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs
GenreJazz, hard bop
Length36:53
LabelNew Jazz
NJ 8255
ProducerEsmond Edwards
Oliver Nelson chronology
The Blues and the Abstract Truth
(1961) 		Straight Ahead
(1961) 		Main Stem
(1961)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic[1]
Down Beat[2]
The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide[3]
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings[4]

Straight Ahead is a jazz studio album by saxophonist Oliver Nelson. It features acclaimed musicians such as Eric Dolphy on sax, clarinet and flute (his last appearance on a Nelson album following a series of collaborations recorded for Prestige), and Roy Haynes on drums. It was recorded in March 1961 at the celebrated Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs. All the pieces were first takes; Joe Goldberg recalls: "The session was scheduled for one in the afternoon and I arrived at 3:30, thinking that by then the music would have been rehearsed and the men would be starting to play. What I found was a studio empty of everyone but A&R man Esmond Edwards", the supervisor, "and engineer Rudy Van Gelder, who were packing up to leave and looking very satisfied." Released in 1961 for the Prestige/New Jazz label (as NJ 8255) and remastered in 1989, the album is notable for its long and thoughtful horn duets by Dolphy and Nelson. Don DeMicheal described the album "All in all, a warm, very human record".[5]

  1. ^ Allmusic review
  2. ^ Down Beat: March 29, 1962 vol. 29, no. 7
  3. ^ Swenson, J., ed. (1985). The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide. USA: Random House/Rolling Stone. pp. 151. ISBN 0-394-72643-X.
  4. ^ Cook, Richard; Morton, Brian (2008). The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings (9th ed.). Penguin. p. 1071. ISBN 978-0-141-03401-0.
  5. ^ Notes on CD back cover