But it wasn’t like dancing in the dark with a new artist. Unless you have been living under a stone or are a non-jazz fan you must know of these incredible players. Luckily – and isn’t it frustrating when for reasons of bad luck or being in the wrong place at the wrong time you miss out on players you know you want to hear – I have heard both players separately but not together. Second Great Miles Davis Quintet bassist Ron I heard at Ronnie’s Scott’s in 2009 – reviewed here; and guitarist Yotam Silbertstein was in the group of the great Jamaican Monty Alexander at the Malta Jazz Festival in 2011 reviewed here. So I knew their great quality and just what they can do up to a point. While a more mainstream player Silberstein – not remotely as well known as Carter who made jazz history with Miles – is every bit as good a player as the much more fêted Kurt Rosenwinkel whose level of musicianship he is completely on the same page as if not stylistically.
Ron who is now 89 released a rather touching gospel album this year – an aisle be having you affair, Sweet Sweet Spirit which I dug quite a bit. But being a bit of a heathen I far prefer this secular release, new since – Duets.
Gentle, extremely, even you could gloss it as. Ultra melodic? Not saccharine in the least all this harmonising and adumbration of a selection of elegantly paced themes. The only tunes I knew beforehand were ‘The Lamp Is Low’ which has fab fast walking bass from Ron and ‘They Say It’s Wonderful’ that coincidentally I heard live sung by marvellous Marvin Muoneké last week in Cadogan Hall at a very pleasant gig lit up by Winston Clifford – actually the best gig of the 4 or 5 that I have attended so far this year.
What I love best here and I love it all is the treatment of 1930s Vernon Duke number ‘What Is There To Say’ that Ella sang in the 50s with Ellis Larkins. Johnny Hartman sang it during the same decade on Songs from the Heart.
I luckily saw Griffin who died in 2008, a few times, once in Wales and closer to home in Foyle’s bookshop where I once worked selling books as a basement underling down in the Eng Lang section to legendary doyen of the shop the eccentric playwright Giles Armstrong whose scripts for radio plays I used to read when I got home to my little room in Arnold Road, Tottenham at the time where I was living in a shared house with a few nice people who included Welsh show singer Samantha Lavender who went on to be in Which Witch and Chess and an Irish violinist from Belfast Clare McSherry as she was then who now runs Musical Chairs in Manchester. A mate of Sam’s came along with me the first time I went to Ronnie Scott’s which was to hear Cuban wiz Arturo Sandoval in 1990. Not sure if Giles’ intricately plotted drawing room epics ever got broadcast on Radio 4 which is what he wanted (and by god they put out a lot worse in their dismal post Archers afternoon slump of a mid-afternoon slot sometimes) – hope they did.
The Little Giant did a great version of ‘If I Should Lose You’ that stays with me still. Back in the autumn I found that like here people still play the Little Giant’s tunes as the Tubbyologist Simon Spillett interpreted ‘Sunny Monday’ at a gig in the Bohemia in my long time home turf of Finchley.
And again as on Duets I came away with a smile. (Geezer: who wants to grimace to the creaking gate of the species all night long unless feeling in a masochistic frame of mind, again?)
I find it frustrating that real heartland style jazz as here is neglected by a new generation of seriously misled fans who get their kicks on the emperor’s new clothes non-toe tappery of nu jazz which to me is not rewarding given its unerring urge to pose and rash of performative we’re on a roof terrace, again, in a carpark, get us dull Peckham-itis.
You could spend all day long and I do and still find new things, little exquisite details, to hear like discovering the source of the Nile for the first time on this beautiful album.
This review just skims the surface and obviously bleats on a bit irrelevantly (apols) but hope you glean the gist of what I’m trying to tease out. In the blizzard of the Internet when quality is so often forsaken and neglected in favour of aural bric a brac and tacky trifles that make jingles suddenly seem like Mozart and hideous muzak somehow as beautiful as a Modigliani, somebody has to point the obvious out – jazz like this will outlive us all.
“Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people” – Langston Hughes.