ABOUT THE ALBUM This is an easy-listening jazz album. The quintet consists of guitar, vibes, keys, upright bass and percussion. There is nothing offensive or \"outside\" or avant garde about this album. It\'s just good, listenable music. (Total time: 54:14) This music is very much in the West Coast Cool Jazz mode, i.e., a minimalist, less frenetic, calmer style than the East Coast hard bop, more heavily arranged, and more often compositionally based. My formative years were the fifties, listening to just about everyone who recorded on the Pacific Jazz and Contemporary labels. Guys I was influenced by were the ones I thought got it right -- Ben Webster and Lester Young (tenor), Paul Desmond (alto sax), Jimmy Giuffre (clarinet), Red Mitchell (bass), Shelly Manne (drums), Billy Bauer (guitar), Chet Baker (trumpet), Gerry Mulligan (bari sax), Pete Jolly (piano), Don Elliott (mellophone), Lennie Tristano (piano) and Cal Tjader (vibes), to name just a few of the many. ABOUT THE ARTIST Bob Burford is a self-taught finger-style jazz guitarist who grew up with a guitar in the house. He was surrounded by uncles on both sides of the family who played Texas Swing and Hillbilly (that was before the term \"Country & Western\" was coined). He started playing in clubs at the age of 15 in the resort area of southwestern Michigan in the early 1950s. At age 17 he began working with show bands playing rhythm and blues and jazz. Later, he studied privately with renowned guitarist Charlie Byrd who, with tenor saxophonist Stan Getz, introduced bossa nova to North America with their “Jazz Samba” album in the early 1960s. Byrd introduced him to John Marlow at American University in Washington, D.C., with whom he studied classical guitar. From there he went to Las Vegas where he worked for Al Ramsey who contracted a stable of musicians who backed all of the casino headliners. Ramsey later became director of entertainment at Caesar’s Palace. Burford\'s claim to fame comes more from who he did not work with rather than who he has worked with. He got the call from Ramsey\'s office to work the Sinatra show but he missed that date because his answering service failed to give him the message until 26 hours later. He is most proud of his two-year association with legendary guitarist George Barnes (Chet Atkins\' favorite guitarist) at Concord Jazz in California. That collaboration produced what came to be known as “the Concord Sound.” Burford is semi-retired now but still owns a private investigative agency in Nashville where he is actively involved in the music scene. ABOUT THE TUNES 1. There Will Never Be Another You – Harry Warren’s standard done with a bit of a laid-back gallop of a kick. 2. A Night In Tunisia – Dizzy Gillespie’s standard performed fairly conventionally. 3. It’s You I Like – Fred “Mister” Rogers’ oft-sung tune on his “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” the longest-running show on PBS, debuting in 1966. Lyrics to jog your memory: “It’s you I like, it’s not the clothes you wear, it’s not the way you wear your hair but it’s you I like ...” 4. Besame Mucho – Consuelo Velazquez was a classically trained pianist from a wealthy family in Mexico. The Beatles performed this tune on New Year’s Day, 1962, in their unsuccessful audition for Decca. The tune was recorded by absolutely everyone, from Presley to the Beatles to Sinatra, to the doo-wop groups. 5. Stompin’ At The Savoy – Ella Fitzgerald started her career with Chick Webb’s band. Chick Webb co-authored this tune with Benny Goodman. In the middle you’ll hear lines from “Perfidia”, “Baby Don’t Be That Way”, “Swinging on a Star” and “On the Trail”. 6. The Sidewinder – The Lee Morgan tune that literally made his career. Research failed to find this tune done by other guitarists. Lee Morgan was playing at Slugs, a seedy kinda jazz dive on 3rd Street between B & C in the seemy East Village section of NYC. In 1972 his long-time live-in common-law wife came in one night and shot him dead. He was 33 years old. 7. Just The Way You Are – Just a really nice tune, one of the many authored by Billy Joel. 8. Lucky Southern – Keith Jarrett’s jazz standard. 9. Nome Sane? – The hardest part of writing an instrumental tune is coming up with a title. The genesis of this title was born in a recent conversation about how we enunciate, or don’t enunciate our speech. “Jevver” is how we say “did you ever”; “Do you know what I am saying?” comes out “Nome sane?” Pity the foreigners who must figure out what it is we’re saying. 10. Samba de Orfeu – The two original and primary exponents of bossa nova were Luis Bonfa and Antonio Carlos Jobim who collaborated on the music for the 1956 Vinicius de Moraes play “Orfeu da Conceicao”. Moraes would eventually write lyrics for most of Jobim’s plethora of bossa tunes. Their music would ultimately become the soundtrack of the 1958 film “Orfeu Negro”, or “Black Orpheus” as we know it. 11. Brief and Breezy – There is in existence a DVD of six or eight of the “Peter Gunn” episodes. This is the tune at the beginning of the disc. There are no music credits on the DVD other than a mention of Henry Mancini. Mancini wrote something like 18 or 20 tunes for the “Peter Gunn” series, the first TV series to have its own music. 12. Gypsyville – This is one of several tunes composed especially for and used by a school of dance for their original, extemporaneous, interpretative recital.