CCMusic.com

2025 release. Cellar Music boss Cory Weeds returns with another fine recording backed by the dependently swinging rhythm section of frequent Cellar Music players (pianist Miles Black, bassist John Lee, and drummer Jesse Cahill) and alongside the famously big horn of Jerry Weldon! Weeds is an accomplished and highly stylized tenor man cut from the swinging cloth of Gene Ammons, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, and George Coleman. On 'Meets Jerry Weldon', this winning formula continues. This recording is not sheepish about acknowledging it's two-tenor front line influences. Right out of the gate, listeners are treated to the hard driving Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis "Body and Soul" (with a dominant bridge) contrafact, "Hey Lock," that, like the composer himself, is associated with two-tenor battles; in this case between Davis and Chicago's "Little Giant," Johnny Griffin. And it is that same spirit of collegial competitiveness that comes when two masters of the instrument join forces with the shared purpose of swinging listeners into next week that permeates not only those seminal tenor-battle recordings from years past, but this wonderful new 2025 release.