Scoop Up Acoustic Sounds’ ‘The Great Kai & J.J.,’ But Don’t Forget The Original

TROMBONE LEGENDS J.J. JOHNSON & KAI WINDING’S 1960 RAPPROCHEMENT SOUNDS SUPERB — BUT THE ORIGINAL PRESSING HAS ONE MAJOR STRENGTH

To Nick Finzer, the pioneering trombonist J.J. Johnson is often taken for granted. A standout among the new generation of trombonists, Finzer released Legacy — a full-album tribute to his hero, last year — “He’s one of those figures where people know and are familiar with his name,” he told me. “But when you start to dig a little deeper below the surface, people don’t realize how transformative he was.”

Transformative indeed: in retrieving the trombone from its traditional swing-era function and rendering it a highly personal solo voice, Johnson earned a permanent spot in jazz history. Through small-group recordings with luminaries like Bud Powell, Sonny Rollins, and Miles Davis, he established himself as a human bridge between the trombone and the bebop revolution.

While Johnson typically gets far more flowers, Kai Winding was also quietly transformative in his own right — primarily through his close partnership with said innovator. In the 1950s, they performed together as “Jay and Kai”; Johnson was a rising star who’d worked with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, while Winding had made waves as a key member of Stan Kenton’s orchestra.

In 1954, Johnson and Winding debuted their two-trombone frontline, and recorded outstanding works like 1955’s K + J.J. and Trombone for Two — as well as 1956’s all-bones-on-deck Jay and Kai + 6, featuring Urbie Green, Eddie Bert, and other colleagues on the valves. Near the end of the decade, the pair started to professionally diverge — Johnson honed in on modern jazz, while Winding explored more commercial territory.

Which brings us to 1960’s The Great Kai & J.J., a grand reunion for the pair. Although they’d record three more albums together in the late 60’s, those, like 1969’s Betwixt & Between, dealt in realms of classical and fusion. As far as gritty, small-group fare is concerned, The Great Kai & J.J. — featuring pianist Bill Evans, bassists Paul Chambers and Tommy Williams, and drummers Roy Haynes and Art Taylor — is the last hurrah for this prodigious partnership.

Besides the brilliance of the music, the album stands alone in another intriguing sense: it was the very first release on Impulse! Records, catalog number A-1. With Acoustic Sounds having released a fresh 180-gram vinyl pressing last February, well, you know the drill: it’s time to play it against a 65-year-old original, on Tracking Angle EIC Michael Fremer’s lavish basement setup.

As is so often the case with even the most meticulous repressings, there’s a give and take at play with The Great Kai & J.J. While the original has a punchier midrange, in the 2025 redux, the details of Johnson and Winding’s velvet-yet-biting tones — akin to a perfectly aged bourbon — are immaculately preserved. On more driving, uptempo material like “This Could Be The Start of Something Big” and “Going Going Gong” — punctuated by the titular cymbal — the music as a whole is dazzlingly radiant.

A slight drawback, and caveat: the slower, more simmering material, like “Georgia on My Mind,” “Blue Monk,” and “Just for a Thrill,” loses something in translation here. With a little less of that aforementioned midrange, some of the emotional picture dissipates; the music translates as well as one would expect, but some of the ineffable vibe and patina didn’t make it to wax.

But, again — it’s a give and take, like these artists gave and took on the bandstand. Casual-to-serious jazz fans should absolutely scoop this up, as it’s by and large the highest-quality version on the market today, for a reasonable price. But for the truly hardcore, who want to burrow into this sound and live in it forever, it might be worth seeking out an original in good repair.

Regardless of which route you go, you can’t really miss as per Johnson and Winding at peak form: these trombone masters remain as transformative as ever. Even if this new pressing of The Great Kai & J.J. is merely a worthy shine-up.