Noah Peterson: Coming Home To You (Peterson Entertainment)
This is Noah Peterson’s seventh album as a leader, which, as usual has been released on his own Peterson Entertainment label. He often doubles on soprano and tenor but confines himself here to the alto revealing an extrovert Cannonball Adderley influence with perhaps just a little Earl Bostic for good measure – but without Bostic’s pronounced vibrato.
He has written some very worthwhile originals (all 10 titles are his), opening with Everybody Knows which has a James Brown-like R&B vibe. I Just Can’t Believe It is a slow downhome blues worthy of Horace Silver and both titles are ideal vehicles for his hard-swinging approach. My Name Is Burns is an attractive modal original owing a little to Miles’ So What. The title track Coming Home To You has an attractive almost rhapsodic quality with a particularly melodic statement from the leader. Bassist Juan Acosta matches Peterson’s lyricism here, using his bow to good effect in his solo.
Hats off to pianist Larry Natwick and a fine in-the-pocket rhythm section who are actually Noah Peterson’s regular working group around the San Antonio area.
The Dave Robbins Big Band: Happy Faces (Reel To Reel Records RTRCD015)
Indiana-born Dave Robbins spent the first seven years of his professional career (1948-1954) in the trombone section of Harry James’s big band sitting next to Juan Tizol among others. He later moved to Vancouver where he led the house band at the celebrated Cave Supper Club. The band played for dancers and because it was packed with excellent sight-readers it also accompanied major headliners like Mitzi Gaynor, Tony Bennett, Jayne Mansfield, Ella Fitzgerald, Bobby Darin and Paul Anka. This CD features them on recordings made in 1963 and 1965 and anyone taking a blindfold test might think they were listening to Count Basie, Buddy Rich or Woody Herman – Robbins’ band is that good. These recordings have remained unissued until now.
The CD opens with Quincy Jones’s stunning arrangement of Happy Faces from his 1959 album Birth Of A Band. It was a Zoot Sims feature and Fraser MacPherson’s concept on tenor here gets very close to the great man’s warm sound and unique sense of swing. The ensemble handles the thrilling shout chorus with aplomb. MacPherson illuminates the album throughout, making notable contributions to Playa Del Ray, Have Vine Will Swing, Asiatic Raes, Reflections, March Winds Blow, Spring Is Here, Sixes & Sevens and Africa Lights. Incidentally, his own 1984 Jazz Prose album with Dave McKenna and Ed Bickert is well worth tracking down (Concord CJ269). The leader, who was also the principal trombonist with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, proves to be a consummate soloist with a powerful sound on Playa Del Ray and Africa Lights. The trumpet section also boasts some fine performers with Don Clark (Minority) and Bobby Hales (Canto de Oriole) providing compelling statements.
The Dave Brubeck Quartet: Time Out (Number One Essentials 291016)
Dave Brubeck’s concept of an album devoted entirely to new time signatures and rhythms was brilliantly realised with the release of Time Out in 1959. He had occasionally experimented with mixed-metres on earlier recordings of Lover and Someday My Prince Will Come, which had the drums in four and the rest of the group in three. It was not until Joe Morello and Eugene Wright had become established in what became known as the classic quartet that Brubeck felt able to embark on what has become an essential part of American culture.
USA audiences had to wait until the group had completed a 1958 European tour before they heard the new quartet. Their first studio recording was on Gone With The Wind (Columbia 88697CD) in April 1959 and two months later they began working on Time Out. The album, so fresh and pristine, was incredibly popular with both jazz and non-jazz audiences and when the landmark Take Five was issued with Blue Rondo A La Turk it became the best-selling jazz single of all time. Take Five has a 24-bar ABA form, although Paul Desmond ignores the attractive bridge during his solo chorus. Brubeck and Wright repeat an infectious vamp throughout, even during the drum solo. Blue Rondo is a dramatic fusion of Turkish folk, classical rondo and the blues.
When Stephen A. Crist was researching material for his Time Out book he discovered outtakes from the Time Out session which were eventually released in 2020 by Brubeck Editions on BECD02020090CD. The album also included I’m In A Dancing Mood, which was not released on the original 1959 session. For the very last word on this landmark recording Philip Clark’s mammoth Dave Brubeck – A Life In Time (445 pages) is warmly recommended.
