UNFORTUNATE BAND NAME: The Big Phat Band |
From the band name and the title, you wouldn’t be wrong to expect Doc Severinsen and the Tonight Show Orchestra. “Play That Funky Music” with guest alto-saxophonist David Sanborn confirms your worst fears about retro-up-to-the-minute hepness: electrified chunka-chunka rhythms and Sanborn mewling hysterically. And if you like Take 6’s superslick vocal pop, then their guest appearance on “It Was a Very Good Year” will be ring-a-ding manna for you. There’s even a bit of John-Williams-meets-Raymond-Scott whimsy in Goodwin’s “Hunting Wabbits 2 (A Bad Hare Day).” But the jazz soul of the disc is in the arrangements that hark back to the brass-reeds-rhythm big-band template that was invented in the ’20s by Fletcher Henderson and Don Redman and carried right on through Basie, Buddy, Thad & Mel, and more since. That would be the synchromesh change-ups and rubbing of section against section — saxes felt-like or furry, the glassy sheen of trumpets, the cashmere softness of trombones, all finishing one another’s phrases, hefting muscly riffs in counterpoint, breaking for the perfectly timed, perfectly supported, not too long solo. That’s why the title tune goes down as smooth as an up-to-date Basie blues, and why “La Almeja Pequeña (The Little Clam)” engages with its Latin beat, or why “Get in Line” is funk that doesn’t overstay its welcome, or why the good hard walk that takes over the rhythm in the TV-noirish “Whodunnit?” is just about perfect.
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Gordon Goodwin: http://www.gordongoodwin.com
