THE JAZZ DEFENDERS

Pizza Express, Soho, April 30^th

Originally published in the Camden New Journa:

https://www.camdennewjournal.co.uk/article/defence-of-the-jazz-realm

Over the years we have had Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Ronnie Scott and Tubby Haye’s Jazz Couriers and the pioneering Jazz Warriors with Courtney Pine, Gary Crosby etc. from South London. Now, from Bristol,  we have the Jazz Defenders. Given that jazz has probably never been so popular in this country, what exactly are they defending? Well, not the art form as a whole, but one important corner of it – the soul-jazz movement of (mostly) the sixties, with records such as Lee Morgan’s The Sidewinder, Horace Silver’s Song for my Father Hank Mobley’s No Room for Squares and Herbie Hancock’s Takin’ Off (which included Watermelon Man) or the under-rated Fat Albert Rotunda.

         Purists were disparaging about many of the soul-jazz albums at the time, seeing them as a cynical ploy by Blue Note and other labels to sell more records on the back of the surprise success of The Sidewinder and, in the parlance of the time, “selling out” (there was some truth in this – records like Lee Morgan’s kept the label alive). Fortunately, “jazz” is a far broader, less judgemental church than it was, and original pressings of the once derided discs are now much sought after by collectors. And the musicians in The Jazz Defenders are too young  to recall the hostility from the pages of Downbeat magazine.

         In any case, the Jazz Defenders definitely have this side hustle’s corner. From the opening blast of unison horns from the frontline courtesy of Jake McMurchie on sax and Nick Malcom on trumpet, the audience knew they were in safe hands – these guys have this music down tight. Furthermore, they’re not a slavish tribute band, the tunes are all original compositions, which may have a rhythmic familiarity but with a modern melodic sensibility at work. There is even a blast of hip hop thanks to the special guest, the actor and rapper Doc Brown who offered a sparky, witty interlude with Rolling on a High (he should have a way with words – he is Zadie Smith’s younger brother). There was also welcome hints in the mix of Quincy Jones’s soundtrack work – think the muscular Theme from Ironside and the frothy Soul Bossa from the Austin Powersmovies.

   Leader George Cooper – who moved house to London on the day of the gig – has played across the musical spectrum, having worked with Hans Zimmer, Nigel Kennedy, U2, Omar, Slum Village, MF Doom and The Brand New Heavies. It is little surprise that he can switch effortlessly between Herbie-like electric piano, classic Jimmy Smith Hammond B3 (albeit on a sound-a-like keyboard rather than the real beast) and, later, perform a lovely chamber piano piece called Enigma, which summoned up the spirit of Mehldau and Jarret. Kudos too to the powerhouse drummer Ian Matthews, whose “other band”, as he put it, is Kasabian. I asked him about being (like Charlie Watts) a rock drummer who loves and plays jazz. “They’re very different experiences,” he said, wheeling out a boxing analogy. “One is like punching haymakers, the other is more jabbing and fancy footwork.” So, one George Foreman, the other Muhammed Ali. In fact, given his ferocious final drum solo, it is obvious Matthews can bring a few Foreman haymakers to the party at any time.

  The night’s repertoire was mainly drawn from the band’s latest album Memory in Motion (Haggis Records), with a sprinkling of tracks from the previous King Phoenix, including Munch, where taut acoustic bassist Will Harris switched to electric for a slice of infectious dirty funk. Live, the tunes are perhaps more full-blooded than on record, thanks to the vigorous soloing of McMurchie and Malcolm and the driving drumming from Matthews, but the album is worth investigating as it works on several levels. Given its lack of jazz dissonance and because it flirts with funk, soul and R&B, it can work as quality background music, but pay closer attention and the high calibre of the playing and writing draws you deeper into what is a very satisfying and rewarding set of soul-jazz in all its iterations. I would say the record (and the band live) is a perfect gateway drug for any jazz-averse friends you might have. This stuff burns.

On the wall behind me at the Pizza Express was a poster for guitarist  Barney Kessel playing the venue, presumably back in the Sixties. It reminded me that I had been meaning to recommend an album by an Irish guitar player who cited Kessel (and Joe Pass and Wes Montgomery) as influences. Unlike the UK, Ireland in the sixties and seventies did not have a large pool of internationally recognised players, perhaps because the Catholic church long waged a campaign against the devil’s music (there were even anti-jazz parades in some towns and cities in the 1930s). Louis Stewart was an exception, a guitarist who played with Tubby Hayes and whom Ronnie Scott rated as one of the best in the business (unconditional praise from Ronnie was as rare as one of his new jokes). Stewart’s debut album (Louis the First) from 1975 has just been re-issued by Livia Records and it sounds wonderful. Straight out the gate with an energetic All The Things You Are, the listener agrees with Ronnie, this Irishman had the chops to play among the top guns. The album is all standards, sometimes tackled at quite a lick, but with remarkably precise playing from Stewart even at the fastest tempi. Mostly performed with his trio, there are also three solo pieces, one of which demonstrates how to take an old warhorse such as Send in the Clowns and breathe new harmonic life into it. Elsewhere his modern-sounding voicings remind me of when Larry Coryell parked his jazz-rock and played straight ahead jazz. Well worth investigating.

         Stewart was also famed for a mischievous sense of humour. One story has it that, when he was ill in hospital, one of his relatives asked if, should the worst come to the worst, would the guitarist like to be buried or cremated? Stewart beckoned them closer and as they leaned in, he whispered: “Surprise me.”

AT the risk of name-place-dropping, I first met guitarist David Preston at Abbey Road Studios, where he was recording with Ian Shaw and the late, much-missed Peter Ind, the Gandalf of the acoustic bass. Preston came across as a quite shy and retiring young man but who nevertheless chose his notes with precision and intelligence. He still works with Shaw (he co-wrote much of the excellent Lifejacket album and is part of the Greek Street Friday album and live ensemble) but also has a thriving career as a sideman and most recently a solo artist.

No longer so shy and retiring (or quite so young – that Abbey Road meeting was back in 2010, which makes me Methuselah), the intelligence and commitment are still there, bolstered by instincts honed by years of gigging live. All this is well demonstrated on his Purple/Black Volume 1 album, the first under his own name, which features a top-of-the-range band in pianist Kit Downes, Kevin Glasgow on bass and Seb Rochford on drums.

It was designed, in his words, as an “in the room” dialogue between the individuals. It isn’t, as many jazz debut albums are, a showcase for speed or stamina or the ability to cram as many chord and key changes as is humanly possible into five frenetic minutes. It is for the most part more reflective than that, the touchstones, if you need them, being Bill Frisell, the more introspective side of Pat Metheny and perhaps early John Abercrombie. Although they are merely suggested to these ears, rather than overt influences.

Not that Preston & Co can’t bust out the chops – Cassino Dream, for example, features fabulously fleet-fingered interchanges between Downes and the leader. The album opens with O’Winston, a reference to the great American photographer of railroads, O’ Winston Link, and is intended to evoke the feeling of riding a train through the mountains in Virginia (it begins with an insistently hooky ostinato bass from Glasgow, at once prowling and probing).

The title track is built on Preston’s favourite power chords, but as with so much on the album, it subverts any expectations from that statement, being both doomy and optimistic.

There is much to enjoy here even for those who don’t normally like jazz guitar, and I found that the record reveals more delights with each listen, especially when you home in on what Rochford is up to, nimbly driving or supporting the other players. Incidentally, the last cut, the lovely, quietly twisty Susie Q’s, is not a celebration of a well-known bass-playing pop legend – that’s Suzi Q – but north London’s jazz wunderkid Jacob Collier’s mum.

You can hear Preston in a trio setting unveiling a new project at The Parakeet in Kentish Town on Monday 29th April. See https://jazzattheparakeet.com/

Returning home from a gig last Sunday I felt like Roy Batty in Blade Runner as I tried to explain it to my family. “I’ve seen things I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Evan Parker on fire off the shoulder of Binker Golding. I’ve watched women dancing to abstract jazz near the Rio Dalston.”

God those G&Ts were strong.

I had just been to see Binker + Moses, a freeform sax and drum duo who were launching their album Journey to the Mountain of Forever (I blame Alice Coltrane) with a blistering show. What struck me, apart from the sonic assault in the second half of circular-breathing maestro Evan Parker and sparky trumpeter Byron Wallen, was the demographic of the audience. Under 30, tattooed, bearded, pierced and with a very healthy smattering of women. Who danced.

Now I have spent the past two months going to gigs, researching an article for a new magazine due to launch in the autumn, and I should be used to this, but the youthful make-up of current jazz audiences still takes me aback. I have been to a lot of jazz concerts over the past three or four decades, and I have watched the audiences (mostly) grow old with me. I am also very used to the “Oh, I don’t like jazz” jibe from fellow music lovers. But the Binker + Moses crowd were young and hip and clearly didn’t have a problem with the J word, even in this sometimes aurally challenging manifestation. There is an excellent right-on-the-money review of the event from the Evening Standard’s critic Jane Cornwell here: https://tinyurl.com/y99vyvc2 or here: http://janecornwell.com.

I saw a similar thing earlier this year at the re-invigorated Jazz Café (www.jazzcafelondon.com) when I witnessed the wonderfully fluid saxophonist Nubya Garcia launch her own album (see playlist, below). She is steeped in the music of Coltrane, Henderson, Shorter and Sanders but with her own distinctive touch, especially on the Caribbean- and African- flavoured numbers (she loves Fela Kuti and Dudu Pukwana) which led to a further outbreak of dancing at the Jazz Cafe. But then again, that’s where it started. It’s easy to forget that before it headed out to the far flung reaches of the musical universe, jazz was for dancing. So maybe it’s simply going back to its roots.

A few weeks after the show I discussed the phenomenon of the new jazz audience at length with Nubya, an interview which will form part of the longer piece I am writing, but it all comes down to a generation where the barriers between club/dance music and jazz have been thoroughly dismantled. Of which more anon. As for the “I don’t like jazz” sneer, Nubya had a word of advice: “Go and see it live.” And I’d add go and see this new wave in small clubs while you still can.

Is this a passing fad? Will fickle youth move on? Maybe, but there are a couple things about jazz: one is that it a very broad church, one that can take in both Radio 2 fave Gregory Porter and Gilles Peterson playing Albert Ayler on 6 Music. And secondly, once it has its claws into you, it doesn’t let go.

Many of the proponents of this new jazz, including Nubya, Moses Boyd, Ashley Henry, Daniel Casimir, Henry Wu and Theon Cross,were in one band or another at the Love Supreme Festival just gone (www.lovesupremefestival.com). No doubt they’ll be back next year.  Or sign up for the (free) Jazz Re:freshed Festival at the Southbank on Sunday August 6 (https://tinyurl.com/ycql4pfo) which features many of the key players. Nubya Garcia meanwhile storms the jazz citadel of Soho by co-headlining at Ronnie Scott’s (www.ronniescotts.co.uk) on August 15, sharing the bill with grime DJ turned jazzer Alfa Mist. Or check out the Jazz Re:freshed website for what is happening on Thursday Nights at the Mau Mau Bar in Portobello Road (www.jazzrefreshed.com).

Recently I was back at the Jazz Café to see Miles Mosley, the bassist for Kamasi Washington and Kendrick Lamar, who had again brought out a young, mixed crowd to the venue. I had heard his album Uprising, which was recorded at the same mammoth (170 tunes?) session that produced Washington’s chart-busting The Epic. There is a typically cogent review here by John L. Walters: http://www.londonjazznews.com/2017/06/cd-review-miles-mosley-uprising.html.

Now, I enjoyed the album but to me it was just a little too polite compared to the raucous sprawl of The Epic. Live, however was a different matter. The sound was rawer, with a keen dose of JBs-style funk from the brass duo, wah-wah arco bass solos, soulful (and sometime, to my ears, Lenny Kravitz-ish) vocals and a whole tackle box full of hooks. Miles Mosley is an engaging and charismatic performer, who can get an audience waving their hands in the air like, indeed, they just don’t care and indulging in a hearty call-and-response. On stage, it is obvious where the “As if Hendrix played bass with Prince” line came from. He even did Hendrix’s If 6 Was 9, which was recorded fifty years ago this year (Sgt Pepper wasn’t the only game in London town in ’67). To top it all, his mucker Kamasi eased himself on stage (wasn’t he hot in all that clobber and woolly hat?) and gave us a typically scorching solo.

One thing. What’s with the gladiator arm-armour, Miles?

Miles Mosley and the West Coast Get Down will be back at as part of the London Jazz Festival in the autumn (http://efglondonjazzfestival.org.uk) when they play the Islington Assembly Room on Sunday November 1.

Meanwhile, here is a quick primer or recent new jazz albums for your listening pleasure:

 

Nubya Garcia – Nubya’s 5ive (Jazz:Refreshed)

Yussuf Kamaal – Black Focus (Brownswood)

Sons of Kemet – Lest We forget What We Came Here To Do (Naim Jazz Records)

The Comet is Coming – Channel the Spirits (Leaf)

Ashley Henry Trio- 5ive (Jazz Re:freshed)

Poppy Ajudha – Love Falls Down/Piece of Mind (Soundcloud)

Puma Blue – Swum Baby (Soundcloud)

Tenderlonius- On Flute (22a)

Binker & Moses – Journey to the Mountain of Forever (Gearbox Records)

Richard Spaven ft. Jordan Rakei – The Self (Fine Line Records)

Maisha – Welcome to a New Welcome (Jazz Re:freshed/Bandcamp; free download)

United Vibrations – The Myth of the Golden Ratio (Ubiquity)