Previously unheard Tubby Hayes album set for release

A previously unreleased album from the late great British saxophonist Tubby Hayes will finally see the light of day this summer. The recording of ‘Grits, Beans and Greens’ from 1969 was previously thought to be lost or destroyed but has in fact been found in the archives of Polygram records, now part of Universal Music Group, who have mastered the record in keeping with the original style (Gearbox Studios have created a 180-gram vinyl edition employing an original 1960s-era Studer C37 tape machine and a Scully Lathe). Tubby Hayes’ biographer Simon Spillett says “These sessions are absolute classics in every regard. It's an album that can sit equally alongside the best Coltrane, Rollins or Dexter Gordon LPs. It really is a lost masterpiece, make no mistake.”

Tubby Hayes is one of the most important, influential and ground-breaking UK jazz musicians of all time. During the 1950s and early 1960s, Hayes had stood apart from many of his UK-based contemporaries, displaying a self-confidence and virtuoso musical delivery that placed him neck-and-neck with many of the leading American jazzmen of the day. He worked with the likes of Quincy Jones, Ella Fitzgerald, Charles Mingus and Duke Ellington and his many fans included Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley and Sonny Rollins. He had his own primetime TV show and was the face of UK jazz.

The sessions will be released digitally as well as on LP vinyl and on CD (as the album that never was) and as a two-CD deluxe edition complete with 18 tracks, in date & master tape running order which includes studio chatter, alternative takes and false starts. It’s all out on July 26th.