Here’s a first look at the cover of Craig Handy & 2nd Line Smith to be issued next month via Sony's classical division's historic OKeh imprint. A release date is now confirmed in the UK for 14 October the date having slipped back from September. Saxophonist Handy, who most recently has been touring and recording with hard bop supergroup The Cookers, is probably best known for his tenure in the bands of Betty Carter and Herbie Hancock. It’s been some dozen years, though, since Flow the second of Handy's records for John Priestley’s now inactive but much missed label Sirocco. Handy also recorded Reflections in Change for the label based in the north-west of England, and before that a pair of albums for Arabesque in the early-1990s. In more recent years the Oakland-born 51-year-old has toured widely with the Mingus Big Band, his laconic saxophone style a standout feature of that constantly invigorating constellation of talent. Handy’s debut for OKeh, one of the most historic labels in jazz but a marque that had disappeared for many years only to be revived by Sony this year, will have a New Orleans as well as soulful organ flavour, and guests are understood to include both trumpet icon Wynton Marsalis and the great jazz singer Dee Dee Bridgewater, the latter adding her distinctive vocal character to ‘On The Sunny Side of the Street’. Other tracks are ‘Minor Chant’, ‘Organ Grinder’s Swing’, ‘I Almost Lost My Mind’, ‘High Heel Sneakers’, ‘Ready ’n Able’, ‘OGD aka Road Song’, famously featured by Wes Montgomery and Jimmy Smith on 1966 Verve album Further Adventures of Jimmy and Wes, ‘Mojo Working’, ‘Mellow Mood’, and ‘I’ll Close My Eyes’.