Product Description:
Personnel: Wes Montgomery (guitar); Johnny Pate (arranger, conductor); Ernie Royal, Clark Terry, Snooky Young (trumpet); Jimmy Cleveland, Urbie Green, Quentin Jackson, Chauncey Welsch (trombone); Tom Butterfield, Harvey Phillips (tuba); Jerome Richardson (woodwinds); Bobby Scott (piano); Bob Cranshaw (bass); Grady Tate (drums); Willie Bobo (percussion).
Recorded at A&R Studios, New York, New York, on November 11 & 16, 1964.
Originally released on Verve (8610). Includes liner notes by Gene Lees and Zan Stewart.
The idea that an instrumentalist as gifted as Wes Montgomery wouldn't want to just blow incredible jazz in a combo usually makes for the sticking point with his pop albums for Verve. But there are a few mitigating factors.
First, Montgomery made a whole handful of small combo records for Riverside between 1959 and 1963, reissues of which are freely available. Second, both jazz singers (Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald spring to mind) and instrumentalists (say, Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker) had long been voluntarily recording pop material amidst big band or orchestral settings. Third, releasing jazz records has rarely made any artist a whole lot of money, and it's not hard to imagine a guy like Wes Montgomery with six kids to support saying to his manager, when the sales figures for MOVIN' WES started coming in, "Yeah! When can we make another record like this?" Montgomery is a featured soloist here, so there's not the excitement of hearing him interact with, say, Winton Kelly or Hank Jones.
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