Some of the biggest, warmest, clearest trumpet and flugelhorn tones these days seem to be coming from Chicago’s Orbert Davis. His second CD, Priority (3Sixteen), reveals just how confident a player he is, obviously content to wail straightahead and surround himself with like-minded swingers. His flexibility with way-up lines and heartfelt blues gives the impression that he has picked up where Nat Adderley left off. The album offers a bit of everything, and everything is first-rate, thanks to the inventive comping of pianist Ryan Cohan and the full-bodied lines of bassist James Cammack. The voicings on “Miles Ahead” are as meaningful as the soloing. Trombonist Tracy Kirk adds considerably to the timbre when blended with Davis. The two appearances by guest vocalist Kurt Elling are excellent-his give and take with Davis on “The Double Blues” is sharp, and he’s particularly wonderful with another vocal guest, Bobbi Wilsyn, for Davis’ sensuous “Midnight in Bahia.” There’s also a great album postscript on Satchmo’s “Weatherbird,” featuring trumpet and piano only, with Davis paying tribute to every trumpeter’s mentor, Louis Armstrong, and Cohan doing likewise for Earl Hines.
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.
Scott LaFaro
Previously unavailable recordings and a new bio illuminate the legend of bassist Scott LaFaro
Kurt Elling: Man in the Air
Nate Chinen makes the argument that Kurt Elling is the most influential jazz vocalist of our time