The blues-heavy hard-bop jazz of the 1950s and '60s has always held a fascination for jazz lovers. Guitarist Pat Martino's "Remember" is a hard-swinging tribute to that era and to Wes Montgomery, whose irresistible style made complex jazz patterns listenable and very hip. Martino, who debuted on the Philadelphia scene soon after Montgomery became jazz's most influential guitarist, knows how to dig into blues and bop to emerge full of ideas, as on the double-time bop of "Four on Six" or the rumbling earthiness of "Twisted Blues." Martino wisely chose pianist David Kikoski and bassist John Pattitucci, who both play with an original, hard-bop conviction. Martino's technique, which he had to reconstitute after an aneurysm in the '80s left him with no memory of how to play, shows a real debt to Montgomery's legacy here. Famously, he relearned his own fretwork by relistening to his own recordings from the '60s. Clearly, though, Martino must also have been listening to Montgomery for a little jazz rehab.
