Jazz
Roy Hargrove
Published: September 18, 2009, 12:30 am
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Emergence [Emarcy]
★★½
Count Basie Orchestra
Swinging, Singing, Playing: A Tribute to the Jazz Masters [Mack Avenue]
★★★½
Would you believe that the drearily old-fashioned and frequently listless one in this brace of new and vehemently tradition-al big band jazz records isn’t the Basie ghost band but rather Roy Hargrove’s 19-piece orchestra?
The general rule, of course, is that all discs by “ghost bands”— aggregates carrying famous names and devoted to tradition in the least interesting ways — are scarcely worth the material they’re stamped on. That’s not even close to true of the Basie disc, which adds everyone from singers Jamie Cullen, Nnenna Freelon, Jon Hendricks and Janice Siegel to such elder jazz masters as Curtis Fuller, Frank Wess and, yes, Hank Jones along with Geri Allen and Butch Miles. Comparing the Hargrove band to this happy Basie-tribute bunch is like comparing a 12-pack of Crayola crayons to a big, juicy 48-pack, full of colors like watermelon and teal. Granted, neither one quite goes up to the full 64-pack of colors that Ellington and Gil Evans always made use of (and, now, the Maria Schneider and John Hollenbeck orchestras do), but there’s still a major difference in both energy and sonority between the tameness of Hargrove and Co.and the loose, pseudo-Basie kick of the Basie tribute band.
The only time, really, that Hargrove’s record partakes of any joy whatsoever is when the band, in showboating swing-band style, sings responses to Italian singer Roberta Gambrini on “September in the Rain.” Compare that with Dennis Wilson’s arrangements all through “Swinging, Singing, Playing” — everything from his “Giant Blues Flag-waver” to accompaniment to Jamie Cullen on “Blame It On My Youth” — and it’s no contest. What a strangely conservative and stuffy record Hargrove’s is. What unexpectedly good fun the Basie disc is.
—Jeff Simon
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