One of contemporary jazz’s most popular and best-respected artists, guitarist Jeff Golub has a sound that’s steeped in the blues and flavored with classic R&B and soul-jazz. On Do It Again Golub honors his early influences with an all-covers album featuring his distinctive takes on classic songs. Some are well known, others are less familiar, and Golub brings his trademark interpretive inventiveness and extraordinary technique to bear on all of them.
Joining Golub is an all-star lineup, including trumpeter and co-producer Rick Braun, drummer Steve Ferrone, percussionist Luis Conte, organist Ricky Peterson and keyboardist Mitchel Forman. Together, these high-caliber musicians achieve a vibe that is loose and casual but never sloppy. On Golub’s version of the Average White Band’s funky “Cut the Cake,” the players and guest vocalist Sue Ann Carwell create a convivial party atmosphere, as if they were just jamming in the studio and the engineer happened to roll tape.
Golub and guest saxophonist Gerald Albright do some no-holds-barred jamming on a high-spirited reworking of Eddie Harris and Les McCann’s soul-jazz classic “Cold Duck Time.” Stevie Wonder’s “Jesus Children of America” finds Golub setting the guitar melody over a subtle Latin groove and a horn section, and he creates a seductive mood on a bluesy version of the Kenny Gamble/Leon Huff ballad “Turn Off the Lights.”
Do It Again is a first-rate offering from an artist with great musical taste and ingenuity to match.
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