Mox Nix

The Jazztet: Benny Golson (tenor sax), Art Farmer (trumpet), Curtis Fuller (trombone), McCoy Tyner (piano), Addison Farmer (bass) and Lex Humphries (drums). From the album Meet the Jazztet (1960).

Farmer’s visits to Europe continued until he finally settled in Vienna in 1968, where he played with the Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland big band and other expatriate musicians such as Don Byas, Ben Webster and Dexter Gordon. During the 1970s he travelled all over the world and in 1982 he formed the Jazztet again with Benny Golson, which forced him to play more often in the United States.

During the 1980s he also formed a group that included saxophonist Clifford Jordan and with whom he traveled internationally. In the early 1990s he bought a house in New York and lived halfway between there and Vienna. He continued to record as a leader until his death from a heart attack in Manhattan in 1999 at the age of 71.

The theme goes at a good pace and is played by Golson, Farmer and Fuller in unison. The first one to perform his solo is Farmer, who measures his phrases carefully while Golson and Fuller make a sound mattress underneath. Golson follows with a solo that increases in intensity as it progresses. Next Fuller enters doing pirouettes with the trombone and then Tyner arrives with an incisive solo, emphasizing each note and ending with a passage of chords. To finish, the group re-exposes the theme.