Bolling's Greatest Hits

CBS attempts to summarize Claude Bolling's voluminous output of classical/jazz suites with Bolling's Greatest Hits, a single disc of excerpts from eight of them. All of the CBS issues up to 1987 except Suite for Chamber Orchestra and Jazz Piano Trio are represented; the list of classical collaborators is impressive -- Jean-Pierre Rampal, Maurice Andre, Alexander Lagoya, Yo-Yo Ma, Pinchas Zukerman. Along with Bolling's changing French rhythm sections, American jazzmen like Hubert Laws, Bud Shank, Chuck Domanico, and Shelly Manne are here as well. While CBS' mad programmer manages to choose the best cut on the Suite for Cello and Jazz Piano Trio ("Baroque in Rhythm"), the most famous numbers on the First Suite ("Baroque and Blue," "Sentimentale"), and the most astonishing piece in the Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano Trio, Vol. 2 ("Jazzy"), the Toot Suite is poorly represented by "Mystique" and "Rag-Polka." Yet this disc will give you the basic idea about Bolling's likable mergers of idioms, and casual browsers may not need anything else. ~ Richard S. Ginell, All Music Guide