Santana: Sentient (Candid 33532)
There’s no listing for Carlos Santana in my copy of Jazz: The Rough Guide, nor any mention by contributor Ian Carr of Santana’s collaboration with fellow guitarist John McLaughlin on the (would-be) Coltrane-drenched 1973 release Love, Devotion, Surrender. This chiefly pile-driving and reiterative electric venture has long garnered heart-felt praise from many, but it’s an album the bulk of which I continue to find hard to like, even as I still find much to enjoy in Caravanserai, Santana’s ground-breaking 1972 foray into Latinate jazz-rock.
Our editor commented to me recently that “Santana is quite a player – barely jazz, but related and identifiable in a few notes.” If you had to pick one album to underline the acuity of that judgement I don’t think you could do better than turn to the present and excellent Sentient – and not just because, thank to the wonders of contemporary technology, strains of Miles mark two of the 11 tracks, Get On and Rastafario.
There’s a fine mellow reading of Michael Jackson’s Stranger In Moscow and the Thriller Kid is raised from the grave to deliver what must be one of his most urgent and compelling vocals on Whatever Happens (Don’t Let Go Of My Hand). Plus: on Please Don’t Take Your Love the very much alive Smokey Robinson (hear him at this summer’s Love Supreme) floats and digs in beautifully in a performance as elegant as it is urgent, pleading and blues-touched.
Throughout, Santana plays better (within and across a range of potent small group contexts) than I’ve ever heard him. His fluid touch and phrasing and soulful, rich sound sting and caress with impeccable rhythmic, dynamic and melodic finesse and diversity: hear him burn and soar over the mellow grooves of the opening, partly rap-fed Let The Guitar Play, supply deliciously pitched fills on Don’t Take Your Love and go for broke on the concluding (and near-Hendrix) Coherence and Blues For Salvador.
Anyone who gives a serious guest spot to Wayne Shorter, as Santana did on his 2008 Supernatural concert tour (documented on DVD and YouTube) is all right with me: and if JJ still ran a record of the year poll, Sentient – released on a revivified quality label long renowned for its commitment to the best of jazz – would be high up in my choices.
Mel Tormé: Mountain Greenery (Retrospective RTS 4427)
Subtitled A Centenary Tribute: His 51 Finest 1944-1962, this double CD on Retrospective is a must for both neophytes and Tormé enthusiasts (the latter surely a hell of a lot of people).
There have been more widely cast two-CD compilation introductions to Tormé, e.g., the 2009 The Essence Of Mel Tormé from the Delta Leisure Group and 2017’s Mel Tormé on the Primo label. But with its substantial, literate and enlightening sleeve essay by jazz luminary Digby Fairweather, the chronologically ordered Mountain Greenery (compiled by Ray Crick) takes the prize as an introduction to a surpassing vocalist, who in an extraordinarily creative life hit the ground running – or rather, stepping high and lightly – and never missed a beat.
There are no fewer than 159 minutes of music here: look out for great versions of, e.g., Night And Day (with its punchy, extensive – even ecstatic – scatting), Lulu’s Back In Town, Skylark, ’Round Midnight and Ellington’s The Blues (from Black, Brown And Beige) and Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.
In Jazz: A Rough Guide Brian Priestley makes the good point that “Tormé was, in many ways, the Mark Murphy of an earlier generation, with a light and airy tone and an almost instrumental precision which blended well with the West Coast-type backings of Marty Paich.” Paich’s engaging work is well represented here with 18 of his charts featured. Other notable collaborators represented include Artie Shaw, Pete Rugolo, Billy May, Peggy Lee, the Mel-Tones, Johnny Mandel and Claus Ogerman. The last supplied the charts for the 1962 Atlantic Records hit Coming Home, Baby – the penultimate selection here before Tormé’s concluding composition and “chestnut” hit The Christmas Song.
Fairweather reveals that (the harmonically ultra-hip) Tormé considered Baby to be nothing but “a minor key blues with trite, repetitious lyrics [and] a piece of junk”. Maybe so, maybe not: but if I hadn’t been turned on by the piece as a music-hungry teenager, I might never have found my eventual way to such prime Tormé triumphs as Back In Town, Swings Schubert Alley and (especially) Sunday In New York. Life can be funny – and fun – like that.
Gustaf Ljunggren / Emil de Waal: Mikroklima (April Records APR 144CD)
I first heard Swedish saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist Ljunggren (born 1974) and Danish drummer (and also multi-instrumentalist) de Waal (born 1967) in the live quartet date Vente, recorded at the 2018 Copenhagen Jazz Festival. Reviewing the album I suggested that “The mellow programme is delivered with a refreshingly cast and subtly deployed instrumentation, including clarinet and electric guitar, Hammond organ, lap-steel guitar and celeste. Whether you love Ellington or Charlie Haden, Edmond Hall or Putte Wickman, the many delights on offer should warm your heart as much as they get fingers clicking and body moving.”
Mikroklima is again mellow – and delightful. But its (again) subtly deployed instrumentation of, e.g., drums and percussion, electronics, guitar, bass and Fender Rhodes eschews any overt jazz associations to cultivate instead an entrancing series of freshly cast rhythmic and melodic celebrations and meditations where the overall pulse has more to do with a post-Jon Hassell, world-textured minimalism than any triplet-sprung feeling or form. Three of the 10 tracks feature a variety of Danish guests, none previously known to me, who subtly enhance the overall mood of open-minded reverie. Sample the mesmerising, shuffling and layered ostinato grooves of the laid- back and concluding Meeen. Simply magical!
