A clear sense of direction is missing in the writing and ensemble performances on this album. Blakey’s Jazz Messengers seem to be the strongest influence, with a little Mingus thrown in. The leader, a bassist and Oscar Pettiford fan, wrote five of the ten tunes, and various sidemen contributed four others. Fourteen musicians, including trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, saxophonists Ron Blake and James Carter, pianist Peter Martin and drummer Gregory Hutchinson, appear in different combinations.
Belgrave plays some fine, long boppish lines on Pettiford’s “Blues in the Closet” and tenorist Blake demonstrates a tasteful ballad style on “The Child in the Womb.” Carter is tasteless on “Open Hit,” using bizarre effects rather than musicality. Whitaker solos well throughout the album, suggesting Mingus and LaFaro in addition to Pettiford. But, despite these and other strong solos, there is the nagging feeling of solos in a nebulous context.
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.
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