Brad Goode Quartet: By Myself

As powerful an influence as Dizzy Gillespie was, today there are few trumpet players other than Jon Faddis who play in his style. Young trumpeters are more likely to work from the legacies of Fats Navarro, Miles Davis, Kenny Dorham, Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard, all of whom grew in various ways out of Gillespie. One of the few going directly to the source is Brad Goode, whose muted work on “By Myself” and “In the Still of the Night” contains passages in which Goode is Gillespie come to life. It is not just that he has mastered Gillespie’s licks and rhythmic values. He also understands Gillespie’s system of improvisation, his discoveries about how to make chords work in jazz improvisation. The result is that, although he occasionally plays phrases that sound like Gillespie’s, Goode is not an imitator. He has internalized the profound bebop harmonic lessons of Gillespie and Charlie Parker and applies them in a very personal way.

Goode’s interval leaps, fragmented phrases, squeezed arpeggios, slurs, smears and other applications of his advanced technique may be partly for fun, as in the final chorus of “The Masquerade Is Over.” But in that exercise in fractured tempo, his whimsical bits and pieces combine with those of the rhythm section to form a sensible abstract expression. Goode can fairly be accused of exhibitionism in his flurries of triple tonguing on “I’ll Take Romance,” but the exhibition is entertaining. Pianist Ted Rosenthal, bassist Steve LaSpina and drummer Matt Wilson are on Goode’s wavelength in this program of seven standards and a blues.

Originally Published September 1, 2002