Veteran guitarist Lee Ritenour surveys his wide-ranging career on the live album OverTime, his debut release on Peak, which is co-headed by his former GRP labelmate, guitarist and Rippingtons leader Russ Freeman. Ritenour’s career has encompassed contemporary and traditional jazz, Brazilian influences and pop elements, and all are well represented on this album. Ritenour and saxophonist Eric Marienthal swing through Wes Montgomery’s “Boss City,” from Ritenour’s 1993 album Wes Bound, and acoustic bassist Dave Carpenter adeptly paces the leader on the same album’s “Ocean Ave.” Ritenour’s romantic take on Miles Davis’ “Blue in Green” features assured playing from the guitarist, keyboardist Dave Grusin, and saxophonist Ernie Watts.
A cover of the Temptations’ classic “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” features singers Kenya Hathaway and Grady Harrell trading lead vocals, as well as an uncharacteristically wailing Chris Botti on trumpet. Brazilian singer-songwriter Ivan Lins sings lead on his song “She Walks the Earth,” and Ritenour reaches back to the ’70s for the title track from his 1977 album Captain Fingers, turning in some lightning-fast fingerwork. For those who’d like to see the performances, OverTime is also available as a DVD.
Related 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.
Kurt Elling: Man in the Air
Nate Chinen makes the argument that Kurt Elling is the most influential jazz vocalist of our time
Scott LaFaro
Previously unavailable recordings and a new bio illuminate the legend of bassist Scott LaFaro