Billy Cobham's classic Red Baron has become a standard covered by musicians all over the world. Billy Cobham has released countless versions both live and in the studio. The original version was on Cobham's 1973 album "Spectrum" and featured the legendary Tommy Bolin on guitar. Of all the exisitng versions my top favourite was recorded at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1982 by Billy Cobham's Glass Menagerie featuring Dean Brown on guitar, Tim Landers on bass and Gil Goldstein on keyboards. Dean Brown's soulful wah guitar solo is what makes it my favourite version. This was part of a live album on the Elektra/Musician label called "Smokin'". For some reason the album has not yet been made available on CD but as of July 2009 was made exclusively available as an MP3 download by Rhino/Elektra. Curiously, the only other Cobham album featuring this exact same line-up of musicians, the studio recorded "Observations And....", also released on Elektra/Musician, has neither been reissued on CD nor been made available as an MP3 download as in the case of "Smokin'". On both these albums, there is a lot of amazing guitar work by Dean Brown and if you are a fan of his, they are must have items. Elektra was consolidateed by WMG's Atlantic Records Group in 2004 and after remaining dormant for 5 years, was revived by Atlantic in 2009. That gives one hope that these two albums could conceivably be reissued on CD in the near future.
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