They say you’re never too old to learn. Certainly, I learnt much from fellow JJ contributor François de Linde’s excellent 2019 portrait “John Scofield: between the gutter and the stars”. Re-reading the piece recently, I found it offered the perfect background introduction to Scofield’s latest release on ECM.
Uncle John’s Band is Scofield’s first double CD, as he reveals in the straight-to-camera information he supplies in the five-minute promo film ECM has released in support of the wide-ranging music. The engaging, gradually building title piece is from The Grateful Dead and further transmuted rock and/or country elements come courtesy of Bob Dylan, the Byrds and Neil Young (Tambourine Man, Old Man). Standards (Stairway To The Stars, Somewhere) and bop classics (Budo, Ray’s Idea) sit perfectly alongside a slew of atmospheric and diversely sculpted Scofield originals.
I’ve long appreciated Scofield – catching him with Miles at the 1984 Molde Jazz Festival, for instance, or enjoying (on YouTube) his burning work in a 2015 Leverkusen quartet concert co-led by Joe Lovano. But until now it’s always been a matter of (really) liking rather than loving this blues-shot and funky, rock-fired yet wide-ranging and harmonically hip improviser. The near-90 minutes of Uncle John’s Band certainly offered me one verb-changing cornucopia of time-proven, literate and swinging yet freshly rendered jazz.
Embracing both the funky toughness of Mo Green and Mask and the exquisite tenderness of Stairway and Somewhere, the organic, variously weighted whole is delivered with consummately pitched musicianship all round. Scofield’s diversely inflected tone and lines – now mellow, now stinging – are as soulful as I’ve ever heard them. And Vicente Archer (b) and Bill Stewart (d ) – the latter a key Scofield colleague for some three decades – are superbly attuned throughout.
Enough (almost) with the superlatives. As the late, great bluesman Kelly Joe Phelps would have put it, “Cop the music – and soar!”
Discography
CD1: Mr.Tambourine Man; How Deep; TV Band; Back In Time; Budo; Nothing Is Forever; Old Man (46.55)
CD2: The Girlfriend Chord; Stairway To The Stars; Mo Green; Mask; Somewhere; Ray’s Idea; Uncle John’s Band (42.57)
Scofield (elg); Vicente Archer (b); Bill Stewart (d). Rhineback, NY August 2022.
ECM 5572550
