• Track Listing

Hal Stein-Warren Fitzgerald Quintet - When he made his recording debut in 1955 - with an album that was destined to become a cult classic in Japan - Hal Stein was a 27-year-old alto and tenor saxophonist with a solid, big band background. Both he and his co-leader, trumpet player Warren Fitzgerald, another young musician, had just signed for the recently reactivated jazz label, Progressive Records, under the control of Joe Maggio, with Gus Grant in charge of a&r and as session supervisor. - The album revealed Stein as a competent, vigorous soloist, a Bird-molded altoist and a hard-school tenor out of Byas-Hawkins school, and Fitzgerald as a percussive trumpeter with a sharp-toned, rough-edged conception, though not a markedly individual soloist. But the most impressive contributors to the session were also to become the most widely known. Pianist Bob Dorough, later also celebrated as a singer and composer, delivered fluent, inventive solos and offered fine support in a rhythm section notable for the presence of the soon-to-be great and influential drummer, Paul Motian, with Al Cotton on bass.