Album Notes

Jack Prather, bassist and composer: a musician of extraordinary depth and sensitivity. Jack was at educated College Conservatory in Cincinnati, Ohio. His career has taken him around the country performing with some of the legends of jazz such as Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge as well as with the Sergio Mendes group. Also, he has accompanied a list of great vocalists which includes Mark Murphy, Shirley Horne, and Bobby Vinton. In the latter decades of the twentieth century, Jack co- led the very popular bands Storyville and Bopsicle on the recordings of which many of his outstanding compositions are performed. More recently, Jack has served as Music Director of “The Great American Music Company” whose live shows and studio recordings pay homage to America’s greatest popular composers (Kern, Mercer, Gershwin, et. al.) with captivating narrations meticulously researched and written by Jack and lush vocal interpretations of Stephanie Haynes and Dewey Erney. Currently, Jack is promoting the CD release of a collection of fifteen exquisitely crafted original compositions under his own name entitled “Shades”. Not only does this album feature Jack’s virtuosity as a song writer and predictably fine accompanying, but also showcases his all too seldom heard vocal renderings that are at once pleasing and totally unique. The band on this recording isn’t too shabby either. Check it out!