Jazz Album Review – Junior Mance Trio

Junior Mance Trio – Happy Times

Jazzland, 1962

This album makes you want to snap yr fingers and tip yr cigarette, just like Junior on the cover… In fact, it is important to smoke while listening to this album – it is the perfect soundtrack to a menthol cigarette ad in a 1970s issue of Penthouse. Everyone in Jazzland is well-dressed, the men w/ their roguish smiles, the women flashing bedroom eyes. Everyone is happy. In fact, Mance himself looks a bit mischievous and self-satisfied, like he was just having some kind of Happy Time of his own backstage. 

Piano-bar all smoky elegance and polished wood. Casting the chords on strands of silver string. Black velvet with a tinkling ice cube. Gentrified Harlem speakeasy bop. Notes falling in all the right places. Tap yr feet. Clouds of smoke in the honeygold lights. Muted traces of clandestine conversation. Candles on every tabletop. The voluptuous redhead you are sitting w/ – her name is Evylyn – looks ravishing in the in-direct light. But she’s fucking Junior Mance not so behind yr back and all you can do about it is tap yr toes and say be-bop daddy-o, you are one smooth dog… and the bass rubba dub dubs and swings real slow… 

The crackle and hiss of an original mono recording from 1962.

I’m thinking of expanding this into a real article. These are my notes so far.