Well, I screwed up. Never made the expected shift from prospecting the incoming queue to sorting out the further listening. What can I say?
It's been a lousy week, so I managed to my hard deadlines and let non-deadline Jazz CG slip. Next week will be it: the incoming shelves are nearly bare, and the replay shelves are nearly full. Not that another bad week isn't a real possibility.
Fats Waller: If You Got to Ask, You Ain't Got It Thomas Waller was a dazzling stride pianist, an enduring songwriter, and one of the funniest singers and showmen ever. Anthologists have been tussling over these attributes ever since Fats, a round man with a narrow mustache and an irrepressibly sweeping grin, died, just short of his 40th birthday. With Solomonic wisdom, producer Orrin Keepnews has given us one disc of each.
Of course, one can nitpick further -- no "Black and Blue," which might have spoiled the jovial mood, and the "Strictly Instrumental" disc moves too quickly into the band pieces, including a couple of emphatically vocal jive-alongs. But if God had meant you to choose, she would have restored the entire catalog, which since RCA deleted their six box, 15-CD almost complete works have been in embarrassing have been able to put him back together again. Meanwhile, this one's a good-enough chance to get acquainted, and entertained.
Madeleine Peyroux: Half the Perfect World (2006, Rounder): As I recall, this debuted at #1 on the jazz charts, and no doubt broke onto the pop charts as well, where she's been before. her previous albums, but also because it moves away from the jazz because it's mostly French, in spirit if not necessarily in tongue -- a Serge Gainsbourg song appears, but also two by Leonard Cohen, one each by Joni Mitchell and Tom Waits. She's a featherweight singer, and the arrangements are correspondingly light.
This is marginal, but pleasantly appealing, ending with a winning "Smile." [2006], Sunnyside): Writing about Peyroux, I almost threw in some narrow cabaret niche, it seems like an arbitrary decision who to ply their wares. It's hard to know what to do with most of the there is any such thing these days, but this one clears up all my doubts.
Only a name to me until now, so I have no idea where this fits among the dozen-plus albums she's released. She writes her songs, has a voice with a lot of presence and nuance even though she keeps it toned down, has a small band that swings lightly -- the bass as audible as the piano, brushes on the drums, Don Sickler's muted trumpet and flugelhorn a comforting Well, Not Anymore! (2006, PowerLight Media): Don't have a recording date, but pianist Jimmy Sigler offers a dedication here dated 2004, then evidently died later that year.
He plays on all but two cuts -- no piano on one, a different group on "Goin' to Chicago." Mariama signs her liner notes Ph.D.
-- the hype sheet describes her as "a triple threat (music, dance, theatre)." She surveys Afro-American song expertly from Ida Cox to Stevie Wonder, has a voice that commands attention, and runs a tight band. Jury's still out on how wild she is, or whether that really shields her Bassist, originally from Memphis, now in New York.
Didn't recognize the name, but should have: credits include two previous albums, Vijay Iyer, Liberty Ellman, and a Memphis r b band called Big Ass Truck. This one lines him up with two guitarists -- Ellman on acoustic, Jamie Fox on electric, both sticking tight to the game plan, producing an Al Di Meola: Consequences of Chaos (2006, Telarc): Starts off as a nice groove album, and stays there. Just dropped closely.
Don't know his work, didn't expect much, but enjoyed what Rez Abbasi: Bazaar (2005 [2006], Zoho): Guitarist, born in Karachi, grew up in California, lives in New York, drawing on each, as well as more extensive Indian studies, for his work. I liked his earlier Snake Charmer quite a lot, but find this one hard to sort out. The core is an organ trio, with Gary Versace at the Hammond, but two songs add saxophones, Rudresh Mahanthappa extra Indian effects, hand drums, tabla, something he calls a sitar-guitar.
The organ is grooveful. The horns amplify the groove rather than play against it. The vocals don't do much for me.
And I wish the guitar was clearer. Seems like too many ideas, but at makes me wonder whether I'd be so militant had Mr. Pankratz -- my intermediate school music teacher, the only one I ever had -- stately, or as Liebman puts it, "like clockwork.
" Troubadour Jass): A long time between records, and this one has passed away in the meantime. I guess the family's allotment of ego got sucked up by the older brothers. Meanwhile, this is as time.
Branford and Donald Harrison alternate on their respective Marcus Strickland Quartets: Twi-Life (2006, Strick as well. Two previous albums in Fresh Sound's New Talent series, plus he's starting to get some prime sideman work -- Jeff Watts, Roy Haynes, Dave Douglas, Marsalis Music Honors Michael Carvin, another record I like by Metta Quintet. Each disc here is a quartet: the first a conventional sax-piano-bass-drums, the second with guitar and electric bass.
I can't say as I noticed the much hyped Robert Glasper on the former, but Lage Lund makes a large contribution to the latter. On both, Strickland is both typical and exemplary of mainstream saxophonists: he can ace any dissertation, but I'm not sure how much of his own style he's developed. His twin brother E.
J. plays drums in both groups, and he's definitely arrived. but, like, what year?
Can't be this year, since that would be today. Probably last year, but that guess will be harder to establish over time. The music is hard to pin down, ranging from slippery free bop to funk and Afro-Cuban grooves.
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