April 18, 2010 to April 18, 2014.

Four years.

That’s how long it has been since I wrote my first post – “Hello, World” – and established a quote from Jelly Roll Morton – “Good music doesn’t get old” – as the official motto of this adventure I call sixstr stories.

During those four years, the archives of sixstr stories has grown to contain 254 posts. Those posts are accessible by month as well as through one (or more) of nine different categories. In 2013 I introduced a new category that I’m excited about and planning to do more with: Quotations Marked.

The total number of reader comments generated by all of those posts has reached 272.

As of this morning, the total number of “views” of sixstr stories has reached well beyond the 15,000 mark. The past year saw sixstr stories’ “best ever” viewing day with my July 14, 2013 post about Jazz pianist Tommy Gallant. That one welcomed 121 visitors.

Before I get the party started, please allow me to extend my heartfelt thanks and gratitude to you, each and every one of you, who visit, follow, read, listen to and comment on my musings and enthusiasms here at sixstr stories.

In celebration of this anniversary, I offer a bit of (to me) newly-discovered music.

On July 16, 1958, Jazz organist Jimmy Smith along with baritone saxophonist Cecil Payne, electric guitarist Kenny Burrell and drummers Art Blakey and Donald Bailey gathered at the Van Gelder Recording Studio in Hackensack, New Jersey to lay down some Blues.

Five of the six pieces the quartets recorded that day were not released until 1999 when Blue Note Records put them all together on a CD called Six Views Of The Blues.

I picked up my copy – because I love Jimmy Smith and Kenny Burrell – this past Wednesday at the Newbury Comics store at the North Shore Shopping Center in Peabody, MA.

For your listening and dancing pleasure – I dare you to sit still – I present to you Track #5 from that album, the appropriately-titled: “Blues No. 4”

Donald Bailey is the drummer on this cut and, after the band plays the Jimmy Smith-composed “head,” guitarist Kenny Burrell takes the first solo. Oh, boy!

This may be a long piece of music, but it is 10 minutes and 54 seconds of absolutely joyous music making. You won’t be disappointed.

Click the link, sit back and enjoy.

And again, many thanks.