It’s interesting isn’t it the motivation behind choosing a record to listen to. I was motivated here because I often like what the Danish indie SteepleChase releases. The livery and cover art aren’t anything to ever write home about, however – trigger warning if looking for tasteful images of jazzers covered in tattoos, rocking branded flip flops and vintage trilbys rakishly worn – you won’t find them on the typical SteepleChase pack shot or “look”; neither is the point of SteepleChase about the perennial hunt for a slice of the cutting edge. Instead it seems to prefer the old and doesn’t pretend to be “avant adjacent” or dabble ill advisedly in such vogue-ish recreations as the blunt pursuit of nu jazz. It would be just as asinine as it would be absurd should it dissemble in such ways for reasons of bad faith as much as anything else. That’s partly because when the label’s Nils Winther in the 1970s was moved to found the label in the land of Hans Christian Andersen it was because he liked a boisterous Charlie Parker track called ‘Steeplechase.’
No one says there has to be a Bird track on a SteepleChase release and there isn’t one here.
But the label generally keeps true to bebop and directly bebop influenced styles as a mission of faith.
And yet, close enough for jazz, there is a tune by Diz, Bird’s chief bebop instigator and partner in jazz, the not very often heard these days ‘Fiesta Mojo’ from 1964 released long after the death of Charlie Parker.
Looking it up, the most recent version of this tune I can lay my hands on is a Jimmy Heath Big Band version from 2013 on an album called Togetherness (Live at the Blue Note).
The Illinois born Nebraska raised Frank Basile, 48, is on that record in the reeds section. He contributes compositionally work like ‘Riggs’ Idea’ too as does his sparring partner and senior Smulyan to You Are The One that benefits from a likeable piano introduction on that track from pianist Steve Ash. He, that is the still glowing Ash, double bassist Mike Karn and drummer Aaron Seeber were on Smulyan and Basile’s Boss Baritones released a few years ago. The formula here is essentially the same.
So, I would return here if you a believer in second helpings and know their work gluttonously enough to want to stuff your face again. But if you don’t, happen to be on a diet or neither, that is no obstacle at all.
What else did I like beyond the sheer piquancy of the plumbing, vibrancy and timbral fruitiness of the lead sound – and You Are The One is enough to make it to album of the week on marlbank at the moment – oh, that’s easy: it’s tune selection and personality.
I often think of the personality of the baritone sax as a bit like the way Prokofiev wrote for not bari but bassoon to represent the grandfather in ‘Peter and the Wolf’ first performed in the 1930s, the decade before bebop was born. Add in jazz flair, change the instrument, keep it deep, double it up, add a rhythm section and you are almost there.
Smulyan, who hails from New York state, contributes the title track by the way. A quick word on him. The Pepper Adams and Harry Carney influenced saxist turned 70 earlier this year and played with Woody Herman’s Young Thundering Herd in the 1970s often topping Downbeat magazine polls on his instrument. I liked that tune but the one I really prefer and again you don’t often here it is Clark Terry’s ‘A Pint of Bitters’ also known as ‘A Pint of Bitter.’
“Mumbles” as he was known did the piece – so laidback it’s almost horizontal – which I think was first introduced by Tubby Hayes on a 1962 album called Tubbs in N. Y. which Terry played on recorded the previous year in the Big Apple.
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