“Play the melody, improvise, tell a story, and make it swing.” That quote, from composer/pianist Steve Elmer, is on the cover of this new CD from guitarist Larry Scala, and it’s as good a description as you are likely to find of the music contained herein.
Like Elmer, Scala is a progressive-oriented jazz musician, as are most of the other musicians on this disc to one degree or another, with the possible exception of traditionalist Tom Fischer on clarinet. But they are all used to working together and are well matched to create the kind of sound Scala is looking for.
Ray Moore on tenor sax, Richard Moten on bass, Charlie Kohlmeyer on drums, (plus Cori Walters on drums and Rick Trolsen, trombone on two selections), are all cast in a similar mold and are thoroughly at ease with this kind of music. And it shows, very nicely.
Let’s face it. When it comes to jazz, New Orleans today is a trad-oriented town. Not much room for bebop, or post-bop, or free form or any of that New York/L.A. high cover charge kind of stuff.
Traditional jazz is the music the locals like and the tourists prefer, and it’s the style you will hear all of these folks playing around town as sidemen. But when Scala has the job, you are sure to find much more of a progressive swinging sound. What’s the difference?
As Louis Armstrong used to say when talking about jazz in general, if you have to ask what it is, you’ll never know, and the same can be said of this particular subspecies. Lots of unison band choruses, plenty of riffs, and all the other special sounds of the swing era and the postwar years that followed.
Let’s look at some specifics: “Isfahan,” the Billy Strayhorn/Duke Ellington tune offered here, begins as many of the cuts do with a Larry Scala guitar solo—after all, it’s his gig and he has every right to feature himself—but this one has a particular forebear: Larry’s opening is strongly reminiscent of guitarist Johnny Smith’s seminal “Moonlight in Vermont” chord solo with Stan Getz coming on behind him. It demonstrates quite clearly that despite living in a town full of terrific guitar players, Larry is one of the best.
Another landmark is featured here—“Moten Swing,” the famous Bennie Moten-Count Basie riff tune, is renamed “Richard Moten’s Swing” in honor of bass player Richard Moten, whose solo starts it out. And just to show they can do it if they feel like it, the disc ends up with a final chorus on “Royal Garden Blues” that can only be described as classic Dixie.
Despite the emphasis on Larry’s playing, there are plenty of excellent solos by Tom Fischer and Ray Moore. No one gets short changed. And while maybe no new ground is broken, this much you can say: it is uniformly good, solid, swinging jazz and a credit to everyone involved.
There are no bright-eyed youngsters here. These are seasoned professionals who’ve been around long enough to face up to the harsh economic realities of a life in jazz, and despite all the vicissitudes, decided to stick it out, to the benefit of all of us. Perhaps that’s the story this album has to tell.
