The latest addition to the Hip-Bop soul-jazz series, Bongo Bop: The Essence All Stars (Hip Bop BIBC 8017,47:50), features another roster of B-3 organ standouts: Joey DeFrancesco, Reuben Wilson and Floridians Dr. Lonnie Smith and Doug Carn. Bongo player Papo Pepin, drummer Idris Muhammad, sax player Jorge Sylvester and trombonist Josh Roseman join the organ corps on a romp through Horace Silver’s “Enchantment” and Max Roach’s “Raoul,” among others. With players of this caliber, it’s pretty much a walk-through, an enjoyable one nonetheless. The material gets a thorough workout (though Michael Urbaniak’s violin seems slightly misplaced at times), from Smith’s solo reading of “The Lady Sings the Blues” to DeFrancesco’s twin versions of “Bongo Bop.” Smith and Wilson step to the fore on “Enchantment” while Carn and DeFrancesco trade off on Tadd Dameron’s “Super Jet.”
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