jazz marlbank marlbank

Drawn from two nights playing in Philly grassroots jazz venue Chris’ Jazz Cafe during March last year this is an acoustic quintet album led by bassist Alexander Claffy and featuring strong soloing from two incredible saxophonists – Seamus Blake on tenor sax and Jaleel Shaw on alto.

Jaleel Shaw, Painter of the Invisible, Changu Records ****

It’s Kevin Hays on piano and Bill Stewart on drums. Blake, the only one of the group that I have been hitherto lucky enough to catch live, is pretty extraordinary in the flesh and here. I have heard him a few times, outdoors at a festival in Malta and far more recently play with a band led by very fine Irish drummer Kevin Brady in Sligo just as Ireland was beginning to come out of Covid.

As for Alex Claffy, the 33-year-old was born in Philadelphia. He moved to New York in 2011 to study at The New School under musicians including the Second Great Miles Davis Quintet icon Ron Carter and Kind of Blue drummer Jimmy Cobb (1929-2020). Claffy is a consummate straightaheader. There is a lot of hurtling vibrancy on this record. You will be head bobbing along.

Bill Stewart, Live At The Village Vanguard, Criss Cross Jazz ***

What’s here? Opening with George Shearing’s ‘She’ I grooved more to the fast fingered Bill Stewart tune ‘7.5’. It appeared on Stewart’s Live at the Village Vanguard which had Walter Smith III and the great Brad Mehldau bassist Larry Grenadier with Stewart. This Philly recording is just as good as that very appealing release.

‘When you hear me singin’ this old lonesome song people, you know these hard times can last us so long’

An interesting choice slowing things down is the interpretation of Skip James 1930s song ‘Hard Time Killing Floor Blues’ that has been covered by Buddy Guy on his incredible 2003 album Blues Singer.

Quite a few tracks – as you’d perhaps expect from a live album when musicians want and need to stretch out in front of an audience up close and personal – are hugely long. I liked the 14 min version of Wayne Shorter Night Dreamer (Blue Note, 1964) classic ‘Oriental Folk Song’ most. Hays’ piano intro is exquisite. I dug his record The Wait last year, a duo with Brad Art of the Trio legend the Catalan cat Jorge Rossy. There’s a bit on it below if you haven’t the foggiest about what I am referring to.

Kevin Hays & Jorge Rossy, The Wait, Clap Your Hands ***1/2

John Coltrane’s ‘Just for the Love’ from the 1950s that pitted First Great Miles Davis Quintet bassist Paul Chambers & Trane with father of hard bop Horace Silver, Donald Byrd, Kenny Burrell and Philly Joe Jones found on Whims of Chambers you don’t often hear. So, yet another reason to lap up this fine album like mother’s milk. The only other version I have come across on a record is by Ari Ambrose on the saxist’s gutsy 1990s era album Introducing Ari Ambrose. What Claffy and the cats do is a cut above, add an extra A+ to AA’s.

It’s just an hour on the wings of a dove: Warm love in the room when Claffy and the cats play Trane in Philly. The sax genius lived in the city of brotherly love at 1511 N. 33rd Street in the Strawberry Mansion neighbourhood from 1952 to 1958.

Leaps out of the speakers: what a very happening live album. Claffy has great chops and measures the beat meticulously throughout.