“Dance of the Infidels” – Bud Powell’s Modernists (1949)

An original tune from Bud Powell’s first session for Blue Note in 1949 with an eighteen-year-old Sonny Rollins and an exuberant Fats Navarro.

During Powell’s piano solo, we can faintly hear someone (I am guessing Powell?) singing along as they play. His playing is confident, fluid, and elegant. Fats Navarro provides the high point of the track, raising the spirits with a fine trumpet solo. The young Rollins then gives us a very brief preview of things to come as he offers a few lines to ponder.

0:00 Intro / Head
0:49 Piano solo (Bud Powell)
1:54 Trumpet solo (Fats Navarro)
2:11 Sax solo (Sonny Rollins)
2:28 Outro

Recorded at WOR Studios in New York City on August 9, 1949.
Released as Blue Note 1568 (Mx BN 362-1).

Credits:
Bud Powell – piano
Fats Navarro – trumpet
Sonny Rollins – tenor sax
Tommy Potter – bass
Roy Haynes – drums