1976
HARD WORK * JOHN HANDY * IMPULSE! 7001 * UK
This record is, to me, very much like any number of those journeyman type Jazz-Funk records that proliferated around this time, mostly as album tracks, which I always found pretty indistinguishable one from another. All these endless tracks seemed to have a smoothness, facility and a high level of perfection which never varied, I don't doubt there was progression and differences and that many even took chances but I was never able to hear it. Hard Work however seemed to have a harder (no pun intended) edge to it, and with an effort that seems to be just outside of the gently gliding stream of those others, . Texas born alto saxophonist John Richard Handy was a highly talented man he was a an armature featherweight boxing champion at 16, formally studded music at collage and played with various orchestras and with Jazz giants like Charles Mingus, and in the late 1960s taught Jazz and Black history at various collages and institutions on the West Coast.