Hugh Lawson

Colour is a trio album by Detroit pianist Hugh Lawson, with Calvin Hill on bass and Louis Hayes on drums. It was recorded at Vanguard Studios in New York on January 15, 1983 and released by Soul Note the same year. Lawson, born in Detroit in 1935, first made his name in the late 1950s through a partnership of more than ten years with Yusef Lateef. This is one of only a handful of albums under his own name.

The session was produced by Giovanni Bonandrini, engineered by David Baker, and mixed on July 29, 1983 at Barigozzi Studio in Milan with Gennaro Carone and Giancarlo Barigozzi; Lee Jeske wrote the liner notes. Hill was then also the bassist in Max Roach's quartet, with whom he had recorded In The Light in Milan the previous July. The program opens with Lawson's own arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures At An Exhibition, under five minutes, and includes If by David Gates. The other five pieces are Lawson originals: The Tinkler and The Beast From Bali-Bali, each about eight minutes, are the longest, alongside Georgie Porgie, 23rd Street Blues and Creepy Chicken. It is a straight-ahead piano trio date that reaches outside the jazz book for two of its seven titles.

This is the original 1983 Soul Note LP, catalogue SN 1052, a 140-gram copy from the first pressing that CAM Jazz, owner of the Soul Note catalogue, rediscovered in its vaults: four tracks on side one, three on side two.