Jazz Notes - Rodney Jones

I think I'm going to call my ongoing series of short comments on jazz related items "jazz notes". With that out of the way, I just got a new cd today by guitarist Rodney Jones called "Dreams and Stories" on HighNote, with an incredible band, Kenny Kirkland, Marc Johnson and Jeff Watts. Not sure when it was recorded, but I'd guess it was at least a decade ago. Rodney sounds quite a bit like Wes Montgomery throughout, especially since he's using his thumb, rather than a guitar pick, just as Wes did. His playing is fantastic, perhaps not as distinctive in tone as Rodney's current work, but the band swings really hard, through the nice mix of originals and standards. And of course, any new material by the late Kenny Kirkland is always welcome. I was struck listening to this today how incredibly good Kenny was, and what a loss to the jazz community we suffered when he died several years ago. There's also something about the recording quality I like, there's not a lot of fake studio reverb, giving it a very clean and intimate sound.