Roll On – Elmo Hope

The constantly flowing melody of Roll On leaves little space for a horn player to breathe. It's well worth the challenge, though; in addition to recordings in two different keys, we have Minus You tracks that any instrumentalist can play along with; even rhythm section players can replace their counterparts on the recording.

Elmo Hope

June 27, 1923 – May 19, 1967

An imaginative pianist who valued subtlety over virtuosity in the landscape of bebop, Elmo Hope never achieved the fame that his close friends did, perhaps because he so rejected stylistic norms of the time. Elmo was a classically trained pianist with technique rivaling that of his childhood friend Bud Powell and a composer of music whose inventiveness and complexity approaches that of Thelonious Monk. In fact, Elmo, Thelonious and Bud used to hang out so much together in the late 1940s they became known as "The Three Musketeers." Powell, in Francis Paudras' book "Dance of the Infidels" is quoted as saying, "You gotta hear Elmo. He's fabulous. His stuff is very hard. He does some things that even I have trouble playing." Read more...

21 songs available.