WES MONTGOMERY: Wes's Best: The Best of Wes Montgomery on Resonance

Resonance Records, the leading archival jazz specialists, continues their recently inaugurated series of samplers, the Takao Fujioka Collection, on June 21 with a pair of packages devoted to material from their bestselling, award-winning and previously unreleased recordings by pianist Bill Evans and guitarist Wes Montgomery.

Wes’s Best: The Best of Wes Montgomery on Resonance draws from Echoes of Indiana Avenue (2012); In the Beginning (2015); One Night in Indy (2016); Smokin’ in Seattle (2017); and Back on Indiana Avenue (2019). A complete track listing for both packages appears below. Back on Indiana Avenue was issued for the first time as limited edition two-LP set on Record Store Day 2019, and 3 tracks from the album appear on Wes’s Best.

Montgomery’s Smokin’ in Seattle, culled from 1966 broadcast dates with pianist Wynton Kelly’s trio, was recorded less than a year after 1965’s classic Smokin’ at the Half Note and received similar kudos from DownBeat, JazzTimes, and NPR.

All of Resonance’s albums devoted to Evans and Montgomery have been released with the full cooperation of the musicians’ estates. Zev Feldman, Resonance co-president and producer, says, “It’s been an honor to work so closely with Evan and Robert of the Evans and Montgomery estates over the course of the last 9 years to bring these incredible, unearthed treasures to light. These artists are really in the bedrock of our label, and it’s been remarkable to see the kind of excitement our releases generate in the press and with our fans.”

Wes Montgomery’s son Robert writes in Wes’s Best, “It’s been a thrill to participate with Resonance Records these last nine years in getting my father’s music out to the world… I appreciate the care Resonance always takes to honor my father’s memory with each release — including interviews and essays about the music and finding rare pictures.”

Like Resonance’s first two compilations in the Takao Fujioka Collection – Sing a Song of Jazz: The Best of Vocal Jazz on Resonance and Jazz Piano Panorama: The Best of Piano Jazz on Resonance, released in May – the newly released Evans and Montgomery samplers features the eye-catching artwork and design of Fujioka, editor of the Japanese jazz journal Way Out West; he supplied the cover art for Resonance’s 2016 Stan Getz release Moments in Time.



Jingles (from Smokin’ in Seattle)
Mr. Walker (from Back on Indiana Avenue)
West Coast Blues (from Smokin’ in Seattle)
Four on Six (from Back on Indiana Avenue)
Once I Loved (O Amor em Paz) (from Smokin’ in Seattle)
Wes’ Tune (from In the Beginning)
Li’l Darling (from One Night in Indy)
Going Down to Big Mary’s (from In the Beginning)
Diablo’s Dance (from Echoes of Indiana Avenue)
Nica’s Dream (from Echoes of Indiana Avenue)
Give Me the Simple Life (from One Night in Indy)
‘Round Midnight (from Back on Indiana Avenue)