The Blues and the Abstract Truth
album by Oliver Nelson
The Blues and the Abstract Truth is an album by American composer and jazz saxophonist Oliver Nelson recorded in February 1961 for the Impulse! label. It remains Nelson's most acclaimed album and features a lineup of notable musicians: Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy (his second-to-last appearance on a Nelson album following a series of collaborations recorded for Prestige), Bill Evans (his only appearance with Nelson), Paul Chambers and Roy Haynes. Baritone saxophonist George Barrow does not take solos but remains a key feature in the subtle voicings of Nelson's arrangements. The album is often noted for its unique ensemble arrangements and is frequently identified as a progenitor of Nelson's move towards arranging later in his career.
Music
Among the pieces on the album, "Stolen Moments" is the best known and has become a jazz standard: a 16-bar piece with solos in a conventional 12-bar minor blues structure in C minor. "Hoe-Down", inspired by the fifth section of Aaron Copland's Rodeo, is built on a 44-bar structure (with 32-bar solos based on rhythm changes). "Cascades" modifies the traditional 32-bar AABA form by using a 16-bar minor blues for the A section, stretching the form to a total of 56 bars. The B-side of the album contains three tracks that hew closer to the 12-bar form: "Yearnin'", "Butch and Butch" and "Teenie's Blues" (which opens with two 12-bar choruses of bass solo by Chambers).
Nelson's later album, More Blues and the Abstract Truth (1964), features an entirely different (and larger) group of musicians and bears little resemblance to this record.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Blues and the Abstract Truth” is album by Oliver Nelson. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Blues, Abstract and Truth, not as a finished interpretation.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1392110. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1961 and 1964.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Blues and the Abstract Truth” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.