Joe Beck teams with bassist Mark Egan and drummer Danny Gottlieb on Just Friends (Whaling City Sound). The CD’s 10 songs range from overly familiar pieces like “There Will Never Be Another You” and “Softly As in a Morning Sunrise” to more intriguing works such as “Blues for Joe Farrell,” which features Beck’s strongest, most assertive and striking solo, the inventive and enjoyable “Get Ready” and the lush rendition of “Gentle Rain.” Egan and Gottlieb make excellent partners in this trio, which has a cohesive, inviting sound. Egan’s lines on “Zanzibar” spark fiery responses from both Beck and Gottlieb, while the drummer capably handles ensemble or solo duties. Hopefully, Beck’s next release will contain more originals, because he’s a very good writer. There’s absolutely nothing musically suspect about the trio’s reworking of Cole Porter’s “I Love You”; it’s just not as exciting as their treatments of Beck’s tunes.
Originally PublishedRelated Posts
Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee: Backwater Blues
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Jonathan Butler: The Simple Life
Jonathan Butler’s optimistic music belies a dirt-poor childhood growing up in a South Africa segregated by apartheid. Live in South Africa, a new CD and DVD package, presents a sense of the resulting inner turmoil, mixed with dogged resolve, that paved the way to his status as an icon in his country and successful musician outside of it. Looking back, the 46-year-old Butler says today, the driving forces that led to his overcoming apartheid-the formal policy of racial separation and economic discrimination finally dismantled in 1993-were family, faith and abundant talent.
“When we were kids, our parents never talked about the ANC [African National Congress] or Nelson Mandela,” he says. Butler was raised as the youngest child in a large family. They lived in a house patched together by corrugated tin and cardboard, in the “coloreds only” township of Athlone near Cape Town. “They never talked about struggles so we never knew what was happening.”
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Harry Connick, Jr.: Direct Hits
Two decades after his commercial breakthrough, Harry Connick Jr. taps legendary producer Clive Davis for an album of crooner roots and beloved tunes
Scott LaFaro
Previously unavailable recordings and a new bio illuminate the legend of bassist Scott LaFaro