UGETSU is one of the Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers great live albums but somehow underrated...
Not many jazz collectors outside of Japan know UGETSU is a Japanese word and what about origin of this word?
Ugetsu is taken from a Japanese novel - Ugetsu Monogatari written in Edo era over 300 years ago. It is a kind of fantasy story and not many Japanese people know...Actually I didn't know! haha...
Ugetsu in Japanese - Kanji is writtem like,
雨月
As you can see, there is a couple of kanji combined together. The 1st character, 雨means rain. The 2nd character, 月means month. So, Ugetsu by itself means like
Month of Rain
In the novel, it is more like, the atmosphere after the rain.
We really don't know how and where the composer of Ugetsu, Cedar Walton took that funny Japanese word!! Anyway, it is a great song.
The entire sessions together with Ugetsu are really great and the recording quality as well as pressing, sound quality of this SMJ series by Victor Music Japan are really superb!
Since it is becoming hard to find this reissue of UGETSU nowadays, whenever you find it on the market, I recommend you to get it!
