Another jazzy spoken-hop tour through the musical past—this time dedicated to James Brown.
Tony Adamo, who seems to have become the undisputed heavyweight historian and champion of all things jazzy and funky, here spends only about a third of the song doing his uniquely usual thang: spoken-word-scatting on the significance and greatness of The Hardest Working Man in Show Biz. And just when you think maybe Adamo ought not ot be singing—Gotta get up! Gotta get up!—the strength and the passion—always an infectious passion, which is the key to Adamo—bursts through on “Weeellll!” And then Adamo graciously steps off, giving the spotlight up, first to guitarist Steve Homan, who lays down an especially jazzy riff (while his bandmates keep up the JB references underneath) and second to organ master Delbert Bump. Bump’s solo takes up a good half of “JB”—a really good, very impressive, and super mellifluous song.
The line up for JB.
Tony Adamo Vocal/Hipspokenword-wrote lyrics
Mike Clark-Drums
Trumpet,Trombone-Tim Ouimette
Bass-Richie Goods
Bari Sax-Bill Harris
Organ-Delbert Bump
Guitar-Steve Homan
Devon Jackson has written about music and film for a variety of publications from Entertainment Weekly and The Village Voice to Rolling Stone and Details