Further Adventures of Christian and Joey
CHRISTIAN McBRIDE BIG BAND
For Jimmy, Wes and Oliver
Mack Avenue
Christian McBride’s first two big-band albums won Grammys. The new one is grounded in specific history. Jimmy Smith and Wes Montgomery recorded two LPs in 1966, The Dynamic Duo and Further Adventures of Jimmy and Wes. McBride says he and his classmate Joey DeFrancesco “wore out the grooves” of these records when they were in high school in Philadelphia. DeFrancesco fills Smith’s organ role on McBride’s new release.
The Smith/Montgomery recordings had pieces for big band arranged by Oliver Nelson and also quartet tracks. So does For Jimmy, Wes and Oliver. But McBride’s tribute is more spiritual than one-for-one. He repeats only four tunes from the 1966 albums. All are big-band tracks. It is fun to hear “Night Train” again, powering headlong over the rails, and to hear McBride’s tight large ensemble crack “Milestones” like a whip.
The quartet here is DeFrancesco, Mark Whitfield, McBride, and drummer Quincy Phillips. The first three take almost all the solos. Given this chance to stretch out, DeFrancesco reveals the enormous range of his B-3 chops, and Whitfield reveals that he should be mentioned more often on lists of the top jazz guitarists.
On this swinging, hard-driving album, two rapt quartet ballads stand out. On “I Want to Talk About You,” Whitfield creates gentle tension by continuously postponing melodic closure. On “The Very Thought of You,” DeFrancesco makes his boisterous instrument whisper in your ear. McBride also solos, pizzicato and arco respectively, on these two love songs. In his hands, an acoustic bass can shamelessly expose the human heart.
This is not an album for adventurous listeners who require risk in their jazz. But this conservative, impeccably executed music is full of joie de vivre. In times like these, who can’t use more of that? THOMAS CONRAD
ERIC REVIS
Slipknots Through a Looking Glass
Pyroclastic
The sound of Eric Revis’ bass is one of modern jazz’s most fetching. His thumps and strums are full of feels, and with Ron St. Germain’s production enhancing their textural verities on this must-hear quintet date, they’re riveting enough to be deemed first among equals. In Revis’ hands, the bass, as well as the band, presents an orchestral character.
bolsters the 53-year-old’s rep as a cagey polyglot. You can sniff out a few of his intentions by the way he’s built the unit for his eighth album as a leader: out of essential cogs from previous iterations of his squad(s). Darius Jones and Bill McHenry graced; Kris Davis lifted ; Chad Taylor drove both of those impressive dates. Each participant revels in trouncing presumed stylistic demarcations while advancing the greater good. Like the U.S. Postal Service, they deliver to a variety of zip codes.
