Three-fifths of this month’s reviewed albums – see immediately below – are made by Amsterdam-based musicians from all over the world. Though, for various reasons, the jazz infrastructure in The Netherlands is in poor health, expats flock to the highly regarded conservatories or blow in from the underground and take the big city scenes as a springboard for international gigs and projects.
The Leaning In Underground featuring Paula Bilá: En Espãnol (Jazz In Amsterdam Records 24-001)
Linus Eppinger is both a straightahead jazz player and guitarist and songwriter of the hi-voltage R&B group The Hi-Stakes. His band The Leaning In Underground strays from the soul-jazz path in its second album, which features Paula Bilá, a very strong and passionate singer who sounds sorrowful in Para Que Sufras and who merrily breathes life into the Afro-Cuban take of über-cliché Besame Mucho. The band adds to the Spanish tinge of En Espãnol with mid-and-up-tempo swing sections devised for Eppinger’s tasteful solos. The band’s punchy, big vintage sound brings us back to the 60s, which is not as easy as it seems and must’ve taken deliberate effort. The rousing highlight of this effort is Ray Bryant’s Cubano Chant, the sole instrumental track on a top-rate party record.
Joan Fort: So Far, So Good (Fresh Sound Records 5133)
Joan Fort’s debut album includes two friends from the lively scene in Amsterdam, bassist Philip Lewin and drummer David Puime. It’s heartening to hear youngsters like Fort in full command of the classic jazz language and, to boot, choosing alluring repertoire. When was the last time you’ve heard anybody play Lucky Thompson’s Fly With The Wind, Lee Morgan’s Hocus Pocus, Elmo Hope’s So Nice and Kenny Dorham’s Esplanade?
Fort, who’s also part of hard-bop group The Dam Jawn, re-evaluates those tunes with gusto and a fat, slightly edgy sound and is backed by a sassy rhythm section. He’s further assisted on a couple of songs by the excellent pianist Timothy Banchet, notably Fort’s fast burner Where’s The Plunger?, featuring both musicians in a friendly battle of refreshing ideas. The band backs singer Sanne van Vliet on a sophisticated trip down memory lane with With A Song In My Heart, placed at the end of Fort’s promising coming out as a solo artist.
Dikeman, Hong, Lumley & Warelis: Old Adam At Turtle Bay (Relative Pitch Records 1203)
The starting point of Old Adam At Turtle Bay consists of themes that by now, similar to mainstream jazz, have actually formed a tradition that includes Coltrane’s Ascension and Muhal Richard Abrams, Milford Graves, Peter Brötzmann, Han Bennink and Michael Moore. Nebraska-born John Dikeman, notable for collaborating with Hamid Drake and William Parker, blends fire and brimstone sermonising with soothing prayers. Admirably consistent and focused, the Amsterdam-based foursome avoids self-centered noodling, which makes it a worthwhile experience for this reviewer, conservative (but open-minded, I’d like to think) fly on the free-jazz wall.
Dikeman’s saxophone purrs like a percolating espresso machine, screams like an exorcist and sings like a tireless seawind. Seeing that Old Adam consists of two parts divided into four and three titles respectively, played without pause throughout at club Splendor, it’s difficult to point out where the musicians are in which tune exactly, though obviously Lumley’s splendidly multi-layered bowed bass introduces Groove. (Old Adam, attractively, is not totally formless) Warelis, a subtle and witty pianist, makes her notes in Choral ring like a glockenspiel, stressing the part’s subdued, stately nature.
Drummer Sun-Mi Hong finds a good balance between fireworks and serenity. South-Korean emigré Hong is the Benjamin of this quartet of personalities that keeps the internationally oriented improv scene in The Netherlands at a respectfully high level.
Walter Davis Jr.: A Being Such As You (Red Records 1231501)
Regardless of recordings with Max Roach, Dizzy Gillespie and Art Blakey, Walter Davis Jr. is not a household name. Long stints in the tailoring business kept him out of the studio and the limelight for many years. It was only in the late 1970s that the pianist followed up Davis Cup, his top-notch and collectible record on Blue Note from 1959. He recorded on various European labels until his passing in 1990.
His set of solo pieces, A Being Such As You, was released on Red Records in 1979, properly reissued now on CD by this longstanding label from Italy. It’s chock-full of crystal clear, sweeping bebop lines that come across most convincingly in his nifty original tunes Scorpio Rising and Backgammon. His dynamic rendition of Gillespie’s Manteca mingles drama and tranquility. The sentimental warhorse My Funny Valentine gets a lively treatment that links rhapsody with Bud Powell, a piece of high-level wit that magnifies his object of desire as a lovable but hard-to-get drama queen. Way too good to go unnoticed.
Luis Rivera: Presenting Luis Rivera (Fresh Sound Records 1080)
Rare And Obscure Jazz Albums is a division of Fresh Sound Records that tends to the needs of serious and seriously thankful collectors of classic jazz. This offering compiles two albums by organist Luis Rivera, acolyte of pioneer Wild Bill Davis, who mostly made a living on the scenes in Los Angeles and Las Vegas in the 1950s and early 1960s. His orchestral approach offers nothing new, though he allows himself the odd modernism on Filet Of Soul, his LP on Imperial from 1961 that consists strictly of blues and ballads.
Las Vegas, his debut album on Cash Records from 1957, consists of rewarding takes on swing classics such as the rousing Rough Riding and the delicately slow All Of Me. Chelsea Bridge is taken at an equally slow pace, very subtly, and yes, they do take it to the (intricate) bridge. The inclusion of guitarists Herb Ellis, Irving Ashby and Barney Kessel is an extra treat. Just another day in the studio for prolific Kessel, who smashes the door on his way out of King Pleasure’s I’m Gone, upstaging the likes of Chuck Berry and Scotty Moore. To be sure, this is just an off-beat intermezzo on a swing and soul-jazz twofer CD that should be of interest to organ geeks.
