Bobby Broom, joined by Dennis Carroll (bass) and Kobi Watkins (drums), plays eight Thelonious Monk compositions in this guitar trio take on the great pianist's music.
Jazz musicians have never found it easy to capture the wonder and the eccentricity of Monk's music in any terms other than his own. Yet that has not stopped generations of players from taking on this challenge, so pervasive is his influence as one of the initiators of bop. Many, if not all, sax players of note have made the attempt. It is rarer for guitarists to try – Peter Bernstein is a notable recent example. The danger is that the limitations posed by the instrument will dominate and lead to a sanitized version of the great man's music.
"Plays For Monk" succeeds despite these potential limitations. Bobby Broom's approach is laid back in a way that Monk, the troubled genius, could never have been. Yet there are many stand out tracks where the transformation to the six string instrument works very well.
"Evidence" (loosely based on the Greer/Klages song “Just You, Just Me”), "In Walked Bud" (written for pianist Bud Powell and based on the chord changes for Irving Berlin’s “Blue Skies”) and "Work" (rarely played by Thelonious Monk but recorded by him with Sonny Rollins in 1953) are all uptempo and deliver well.
Interestingly. "Rhythm-A-Ning" (based on the chord changes of George Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm"), may have started life in the hands of jazz guitar pioneer Charlie Christian with whom Monk played in the 'forties, so Bobby Broom's taking this back to guitar is not only successful but has a deeper validity.
"Bemsha Swing" does just that with the trio stretching out impressively.
The following promo video by Bret Primack features the band talking about the album:
It is more difficult to get as much mileage out of the slower ballads. "Ask Me Now", "Ruby My Dear" and "Reflections" shade towards late night jazz. Of the two non-Monk tunes, Harry Warren's "Lulu's Back In Town" (performed extensively by Monk, however) gets into a tight groove, while the Jerome Kern standard "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes", played solo, returns very much to an after hours experience.
Overall, an enjoyable new slant on the great man's music by a rising jazz guitar talent.
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Debut albums as leader don't come more accomplished or more highly recommendable than "Dark Wood, Dark Water".
Trumpeter Chad McCullough has assembled a three horn front-line backed by an accomplished rhythm trio that allows the full range of his writing and arrangement talents to emerge.
The sextet - Chad McCullough (trumpet, flugelhorn), Mark Taylor (alto sax, soprano sax), Geof Bradfield (tenor sax, soprano sax), Bill Anschell (piano), Jeff Johnson (bass), John Bishop (drums) – benefits from the presence of two gifted sax players alongside the leader, allowing full-voiced harmonization and vibrant soloing throughout.
Photo credit: Steve Korn
The eight original compositions are complemented by a successful take on the Lennon/McCartney song "Blackbird".
The ballads "Lock Down", "Home", "Bock's Car", "Dreamscape" and "The Oracle" stand out for their originality, their expressiveness and their more than occasional summoning up of real beauty. Bill Anschell's piano playing is of special note here. But then, this is an almost perfect sextet in which both bass and drums also play an essential part alongside the horns.
The more uptempo material - "Three Pillars", "Nightmare's Dance", "Anatomy Of A Conscience" – is just as successful, allowing the soloists to feature to great effect.
A highly accomplished album. Strongly recommended.
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Stanley Clarke has always been one of the most gifted bassists of his generation. But he has not always endeared himself to mainstream jazz fans. The success with Chick Corea in 'Return To Forever' placed him at the forefront of the 'seventies wave of fusion but since then many in the jazz world have baulked at the outright commercialism of much of his solo output.
With "Jazz In The Garden", Stanley Clarke shows that he can re-enter the mainstream of jazz and begin to pick up on his career as an acoustic jazz bassist that had flourished before the move to fusion. As he notes in press releases to publicise the album, while he has played acoustic bass as a sideman on many albums, this is his first album as leader featuring acoustic bass.
He is joined by drummer Lenny White, himself a member of 'Return To Forever,' and by Hiromi Uehara who herself has fronted her own 'Return To Forever' inspired fusion band 'Sonicbloom'. So in a sense all three musicians are coming in from the fusion fold into mainstream jazz with this album.
However, that's not so true of Hiromi. She has pursued a solo, jazz mainstream career alongside the fusion interest. She appeared recently on the album "Duet" with Chick Corea, which comprised just two acoustic pianos, has performed and recorded with her own Berklee College Of Music founded acoustic trio and is becoming known as a musician who encompasses a wide range of styles, including elements from her native Japan.
This video promo shows interviews on the album with all three musicians:
There are three Stanley Clarke originals: "Paradigm Shift (Election Day 2008)" - written to celebrate Barak Obama's election as President - "3 Wrong Notes" and "Bass Folk Song No 5 and 6". Here, as throughout the album, Stanley Clarke's upright bass playing is a revelation, moving easily from driving bop accompaniment to sonorous, emotive soloing.
Hiromi Uehara contributes "Sicilian Blue", a Brad Mehldau influenced piece -which features a beautiful bowed introduction from Stanley Clarke - and "Brain Training" an uptempo piece with Thelonious Monk influences. She also introduces the traditional Japanese song "Sakura Sakura". In addition there is the improvised duet "Global Tweak", credited to Clarke / Uehara.
The remaining material is drawn from disparate sources.
It is easy to forget that the Frank Churchill/ Larry Morey song "Someday My Prince Will Come" was originally written to be sung by Snow White in the Disney cartoon 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves', so complete was the transformation of the tune in the hands of Miles Davis. Here, something of the romantic origins of the song are more strongly hinted at, especially in the opening piano/ bass duet passages, making the contrast with the Miles Davis take on the song implicit. In recompense there is a straightforward and swinging version of Miles Davis' "Solar".
The only let-down on the album is the take on the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Under The Bridge" which starts out as pop and ends up as pop (or even smooth jazz) despite Hiromi's best attempts to find something more in it.
This is more than balanced by excellent versions of Duke Ellington's "Take the Coltrane" and Joe Henderson's "Isotope" where the trio dig deep into improvisational jazz and emerge with music of intelligence and understanding. This is aided, as throughout the album, by the finely judged and subtle drumming of Lenny White.
Louis Hayes, one of the best jazz drummers recording and performing today, has a pedigree that takes in his four years in the 'fifties with the Horace Silver Quintet (during which he appeared on the seminal Blue Note album "Blowin' The Blues Away") and collaborations with Julian 'Cannonball' Adderley and Oscar Peterson. From the 'seventies on he has led a number of outstanding groups, notably with Woody Shaw and more recently with David Hazeltine. Today, he is still working and performing out of The Bronx, New York.
"The Time Keeper" features Louis Hayes' current working band - Louis Hayes (drums), Abraham Burton (saxophone), Helio Alves (piano), Santi DeBriano (bass). They are joined by Steve Nelson (vibraphone) on four tracks.
There is a wealth of significant, high energy, self composed material that is centred on the best of hard bop with an intelligent and engrossing vibe. Louis Hayes' two pieces start the album - a reworking of "Check In", the Louis Hayes / Reilly Mullins composition that kicked off the 1996 Sharp Nine album "Louis At Large", and "Alani's World" with resonant doubled piano/ bass lines underpinning lyrical saxophone and Caribbean influenced drum rhythms.
Saxophonist Abraham Burton contributes the uptempo and Coltrane influenced "It's To You" and a quieter ballad, "Abellino". Bassist Santi DeBriano contributes "Save Yourself, a complex-rhythm swinger that makes impressive use of the lineup and the additional voice of Steve Nelson on vibraphone.
Of the non self-composed material, the readings of Horace Silver's "Peace" and "The Preacher" are surprisingly tentative given Louis Hayes' intimate knowledge of the genesis of these pieces. This is a great hard bop band but one that seems ill equipped, despite the addition of Steve Nelson, to get into that Horace Silver groove with any conviction. This, aside, should not distract from what is an outstanding album.
The two closing tracks more than underline this point of view. "Double Rainbow", the Antonio Carlos Jobim standard, is given a wonderful, full blooded treatment with especially notable sax playing from Abraham Burton that clearly recalls John Coltrane. Matt Dennis' "Angel Eyes" winds up the album on a high.
Louis Hayes will be appearing at the Stanford Jazz Workshop in August and at the Detroit Jazz Festival in September and is well worth catching.
Highly recommended, intelligent hard bop.
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Re-release date (RVG Remaster): February 10th 2009
Availabilty: CD, MP3 download
While Blue Note re-releases of any quality seem to have stalled in recent months, "Rollin' With Leo" featuring baritone saxophonist Leo Parker - which slipped out in February this year - is well worth attention.
Leo Parker took up baritone sax while playing in Billy Eckstine's band and soon made the instrument his own. He was troubled by drug addiction and died young of a heart attack aged just 37. Along the way he made a number of fine hard bop albums, especially for Blue Note in the early sixties, and "Rollin' With Leo" is one of the best.
The band - Leo Parker (baritone saxophone), Bill Swindell (tenor saxophone), Dave Burns (trumpet), Johnny Acea (piano), Al Lucas / Stan Conover (bass), Wilbert Hogan / Purnell Rice (drums) – comprises musicians that are today mainly not that well-known. But they make a full throated and bopping combo behind Leo Parker's expressive sax playing. He gets the most out of the deep tones to be had while achieving an amazing fluidity on what can be an unwieldy instrument.
"The Lion's Roar", the title track, "Jumpin' Leo", "Talkin' The Blues" and "Mad Lad Returns" are all Leo Parker originals while "Bad Girl" was contributed by band member Stan Conover. "Music Hall Beat" by Illinois Jacquet and Coleman Hawkins' "Stuffy" complete the material.
As with all good hard bop, the emphasis is on the blues and the result is an album that will lift your spirits at the same time as it stays true to the origins of jazz.
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Photo credit: Steve Korn
