This 1964 recording was Hampton Hawes’s first in more than five years. It radiates the sense of freedom the pianist felt after John F. Kennedy granted him a Presidential pardon halfway through a ten-year sentence for substantial indiscretion. The session made it plain that Hawes was still one of the most important pianists in jazz, as inventive as ever and with added richness in his harmonic structures. Hawes heard special qualities in Dmitri Tiomkin’s “The Green Leaves of Summer,” gave it one of his loveliest introductions, and made it a memorable jazz waltz. The album has special treatments of pieces by Davis, Rollins, Arlen, and Berlin, and includes one of Hawes’s custom-tailored blues.

with Monk Montgomery, Steve Ellington