Detroit clarinetist/saxophonist Wendell Harrison set out to reach a wider audience with Urban Expressions (WenHa), and perhaps this set of electro-pop interspersed with his jazz improvisations will do it for him but it is not likely to appeal to the hardcore jazz audience. Programmed keyboard and drums, distant background vocals and an overall smooth jazz/pop format suggest that the record is more likely to be used as background music than something to be seriously listened to. Even Ellington’s “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” receives that kind of treatment, which seems much more appropriately applied to, for example, Stevie Wonder’s “Lately” and the Isley Brothers’ “Living for the Love of You.” For all that, the music is polished and well executed, and Harrison’s improvised solos on clarinet and tenor remind the listener of his well-earned reputation as a fine straightahead jazzman.
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