I know blogs are supposed to be about opinion, but despite my best professional efforts to remain objective I've a feeling a dash of idiosyncrasy has crept into my new UK Jazz Radio show, so it probably belongs here. It plays every Saturday at 20.00 but you can hear it here and now.
This month's playlist is:
1) ‘Voyager’ from Eric Harland: Voyager (Space Time)
2) ‘Rubber Band’ from Miles Davis: Perfect Way (Warner)
3) ‘Danzon’ by Carl Kress and Dick McDonough from Rumba Jazz (Rhythm & Blues Records)
4) ‘Time Gentlemen, Please’ from Bobby Wellins: Time Gentlemen, Please (Trio Records)
5) ‘Sticks And Stones’ from Killer Shrimp: Whatever Sincerely (33 Records)
6) ‘Run For Cover’ from David Sanborn: Original Album Series (Warner/Rhino)
7) ‘I Fly’, featuring Claire Martin from Nigel Waddington: Bigger Pictures (Cala Records)
8) ‘Days Of Wine And Roses’ from Toots Thielemans: European Quartet Live (Challenge)
Those opinions in detail:
ERIC HARLAND: TREACHERY
One of the current crop of young saxophonists who’s impressed me, mainly for his Warne Marsh-Chris Potter style playing, is Walter Smith III and he’s on top form on Voyager, a newly released live set from Paris in 2008 led by drummer Eric Harland. The set also features guitarist Julian Lage who was the subject of a Jazz Journal cover feature last year. Here, on the track Treachery, the saxophone and guitar circle each other in a delightfully supple, mobile manner. Julian is in meatier mood here than on his largely reflective leader date of 2009.
MILES DAVIS: RUBBER BAND
The new Miles Davis Perfect Way anthology from Warners illustrates Davis’s work from 1985 to the early 90s, including tracks from Tutu, Amandla, Dingo, Doo-Bop, Miles & Quincy Live At Montreux and Live Around The World. It also features five previously unreleased tracks, three from Nice in 1986 with guitarist Robben Ford and two from the mysterious Rubber Band sessions of 1985. The title track of those sessions is fascinating: the guitar is credited to Zane Giles but to me it sounds note for note like Mike Stern.
CARL KRESS AND DICK MCDONOUGH: DANZON
The influence of Latin music of jazz is a fascinating topic since to my mind much of the syncopation of jazz, right up to the funk of the 70s is related to Latin rhythm. Nick Duckett’s new double CD, Rumba Jazz, traces examples from James Reese Europe’s 1919 Memphis Blues to Bunk Johnson’s 1945 Porto Rico. He stops short of the well known postwar cubop of Gillespie et al because his object is to show the older, more hidden occurrences of Latin in jazz. One question remaining though is where is the clave rhythm in early New Orleans jazz? To me it hardly seems apparent. The preponderance of major key harmony might be another factor that veils the Latin influence. Nick Duckett will be expanding on this subject in an article for Jazz Journal in the New Year. Meanwhile I’ve chosen Danzon by guitarists Carl Kress and Dick McDonough. With its suspenseful pedal tone and modern harmony who would guess, except from the primitive recording quality, that this was recorded in 1934?
BOBBY WELLINS: TIME GENTLEMEN, PLEASE
Time Gentlemen, Please is the title track from Bobby Wellins’s new album on Trio Records with John Critchinson, Andrew Cleyndert and Mark Taylor. Wellins’s saxophone style is oblique and floating, but underpinned with great propulsion. There’s obviously a strong influence from the melodious Stan Getz, often considered a mainstream player. But this sounds timelessly modern, rather like Stan himself, who was in fact always moving forward. Is there a hidden meaning in the title Time Gentlemen, Please? Is it a plea for less free playing? Or a statement that gentlemen who play time are pleasing? Whatever, the flawless and creative music here raises no complaint.
KILLER SHRIMP: STICKS AND STONES
Daft name, Killer Shrimp, but it seems every young jazz band these days has to brand itself like an indie-rock band to get noticed. In fact the Shrimps aren’t that fresh-faced, including in their number veteran hard bopper Ed Jones. On their new album, Whatever Sincerely on 33 Records, the band add in some electronic noises to spice up the bebop. They’re hardly needed though as the following track, Sticks And Stones, illustrates. Somehow it wouldn’t be as noticeable without the noises though. Seems a nice gimmick, well realised.
DAVID SANBORN: LET’S JUST SAY GOODBYE
Warner’s reissue wing Rhino has lately put out budget-priced five-CD sets featuring classic George Duke and David Sanborn. The Sanborn set has the albums Taking Off, Sanborn, Heart To Heart, Hideaway and Voyeur. I was torn between playing Duck Ankles from the 1975 Taking Off with its characteristically gritty Brecker Brothers style harmony and something from the Marcus Miller period. The punchy production and superb bass playing of the Miller period won out, so it’s Run For Cover from the 1981 Voyeur.
NIGEL WADDINGTON: I FLY
Nigel Waddington is a part-time arranger from London, featured in January 2011 Jazz Journal, who should be working at it full time. As Mike Gibbs says on Nigel’s second album, Bigger Pictures, just out on Cala Records, “Where has he been?”. The album ranges beautifully across a wide range of orchestral jazz style with soaring horn and string arrangements and top soloists. It’s almost completely professional, uplifting stuff. ‘Almost’ because there’s a tiny horn clinker in one of the ensembles at one minute into the cover of Barry Finnerty’s Breckerish stormer You Got It. It’s a tiny, human glitch in acres of superb quality that includes a big-band take on Pat Metheny’s James and an idiomatic tribute to Steely Dan with Jacqui Hicks. But here’s Nigel’s string writing at its best, a setting for Claire Martin on Nick Homes’s tune I Fly.
TOOTS THIELEMANS: DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES
There’s a lot of talk of European jazz these days which typically seems to owe more to the great European classicists than jazz or any kind of people’s music, but along with Reinhardt and Joe Zawinul, Thielemans seems to me to be one of handful of truly European jazzmen. Like Reinhardt, Toots Thielemans manages to sound distinctly European while still swinging. The metal reed instrument instantly evokes images of the continental café, gypsy romance and middle European buskers. Here’s Toots in his mid 80s on Days Of Wine And Roses from live dates between 2006 and 2008 recently issued as European Quartet Live on the Challenge label.
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