Ike Quebec - The Complete Blue Note 45 Sessions [2005] 2CD

Ike Quebec was one of the great tenor saxophonists to emerge from the swing era with a sound and drive that came straight from the early giants of the horn, Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster. Like Webster, he had a multi-hued sound, with a thousand gradations from honk to gruff aside to breathy sweetness. A featured soloist with Cab Calloway before slipping into obscurity, Quebec renewed an association with Blue Note in 1959, recording extensively with the label until his death in 1963. His singles are elemental music, much like those of Gene Ammons, and they show Quebec in all his glory, bouncing and wailing on jump tunes like "Zonky," "Mardi Gras" and "Me 'n' Mabe." But his finest moments came on soulful ballads and slow blues, songs like "Blue Monday" and "Everything Happens to Me," when he could embrace a melody with all the dimensions of his sound. --Stuart Broomer
========================
The Complete Blue Note 45 Sessions is a compilation album by American saxophonist Ike Quebec. The album focuses on Quebec's 45 RPMs recorded between 1959 and 1962 and aimed at the juke box market. The songs were successful, marking the start of a comeback for the saxophonist who had fallen into obscurity since his early career in 1940s.

The compilation was first issued on Mosaic MR3/MD2-121 in 1988, then re-released on a now out-of-print Blue Note CD in 2005. Despite the fact this is a compilation, all the pieces couldn't be found anywhere else at the time of the release, and still remain so, not counting From Hackensack to Englewood Cliffs which, however, includes only a part of this collection.

The July 1 session marks the last day of recording at the original Van Gelder Studio, based in Hackensack. Van Gelder would move the studio to Englewood Cliffs soon after.
=================
In the early 1950s, the jukebox was becoming a fundamental way to foster jazz, and record companies were aware of that. Blue Note had just experienced an amazing success thanks to Horace Silver's hit "The Preacher"/"Doodlin'" (BN 1630). Producer Alfred Lion, astonished by the popularity the 45 had gained, decided to invest more in recordings primarily intended for 45 rpm releases. At some point, he chose to issue Quebec's "Blue Harlem", a piece recorded in 1944. It became an unexpected hit, "the sort of record that any bar in a black neighborhood wanted on its jukebox". After the success of these 45s, Quebec went on to record several full-length albums for Blue Note before he died in 1963.wikipedia.org