I’ll tell you right now that piano man/singer Tommy Wolf is so obscure that he’s not even mentioned in Will Friedland’s encyclopedic book Jazz Singers. Give homage to Fresh Sound records for digging this one up, as Tommy Wolf is a guy to be heard. First, you’ve heard his m aterial, as he composed the standard “Spring Can Hang You Up The Most”, featured on one of these two sessions. He recorded a couple of albums in the mid 1950s. The first one from 56 has him with John Gray/g, Jack Shirra/b and Tommy Thomas/dr. His voice is all his own, a dash of Torme, a hint of P aris and a sprig of Allison. He bops on “It Will Only Hurt A moment” and clever as Frishberg on “There Are Days When I Don’t Think Of You At All”
The ’57 o uting has him in the heavy company of Monty Budwig/b and Shelly Manne, and most of the songs focus on the primavera, as on “So It’s Spring”, “Here’s To Spring” while “She’s In Love With The Boss” oozes with modern irony. The music is all in the clever cool of the West Coast, while recorded in Chicago. The liner notes put some flesh on the skeletal info, making you want to know more about this guy. You’ll gonna love it!