Mitchel Forman

LP version. Only A Memory is a solo record by Mitchel Forman, taped in Milan on August 2 and 3, 1982, and issued by Soul Note in 1983. Forman plays piano and some organ on six pieces of his own. Born in Brooklyn and trained at the Manhattan School of Music, he had toured and recorded with Gerry Mulligan, in both his big band and his quartet, and then worked with Stan Getz. His first album as a leader had come from a solo set at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1980.

The session was recorded at Regson Studios in Milan by engineer Paolo Bocchi and produced by Giovanni Bonandrini, with sleeve notes by Nat Hentoff. Forman's own biography at the Los Angeles College of Music counts it among two solo piano albums he made for the label in the early 1980s, years in which he also toured with Phil Woods, Carla Bley, Mel Tormé and Astrud Gilberto and worked as a busy New York studio player. Later in the decade he joined John McLaughlin in the Mahavishnu Orchestra and then Wayne Shorter. The two long pieces that open each side set the scale: What Did You Think It Was That Needed To Be Loved, Anyway? and Now You See It, Know You Don't both run close to ten minutes. The Police, close to eight minutes, is the piece Forman's own website calls a dedication to The Police. Against these the second side closes with three short pieces, the two and a half minutes of Ramona's Fantasy, Replease and the title track, each under four minutes.

This is a copy of the original 1983 Soul Note LP, catalogue number SN 1070, on 140 gram vinyl: CAM Jazz, which now owns the label, describes it as original stock recently found in its vaults.