After Fathers Day activity (a present, a card, a few phone calls) subsided, I listened to two CDs, one because the publicist for the band keeps calling and asking if I’ve heard it, the other because I try never to go longer than a month without a Harry Allen fix.
Harry Allen
Allen is a thirty-nine-year-old tenor saxophonist from Rhode Island who managed to grow up in the post-Coltrane era without absorbing a detectable trace of John Coltrane’s influence. His Encyclopedia of Jazz entry says that his favorites are Ben Webster, Stan Getz and Scott Hamilton. Hamilton, twelve years older than Allen, is another Rhode Islander. He, too, is Coltrane-free. Maybe it’s something in the salt water taffy up there. Whether or not it was Allen’s or Hamilton’s aim, by not playing like Coltrane they got attention in a world crowded with Coltrane clones.
In Allen’s latest album, Hey, Look Me Over, co-led with guitarist Joe Cohn, his Getz influence is notably apparent in “Danielle,” a ballad by Cohn’s father Al, whose tenor sax spirit is also present in Allen’s playing. They include three of Al’s tunes in the CD, and Allen is torrid on “Travisimo.” It seems to me that Allen’s Ben Webster component is channeled through Zoot Sims, who in his last years increasingly exhibited Webster’s gruff tenderness. But he invests full-bore Zootness in his solo on “With the Wind and the Rain in Your Hair.”
Since he debuted in the late 1980s, Allen has recorded twenty-eight albums as a leader and appeared on dozens of others. He and Cohn have worked together for fifteen years and developed, among other elements of their ESP, an uncanny approach to counterpoint. It is demonstrated to a faretheewell throughout “Pick Yourself Up.” That track and their romp on Charlie Christian’s and Benny Goodman’s “Seven Come Eleven” make me realize how much I miss the improvisational counterpoint that seems to have largely faded from jazz since Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond, Clark Terry and Bob Brookmeyer, Warne Marsh and Lee Konitz employed it.
Cohn is an ingenious soloist, a resourceful accompanist and, when he is moved to practice it, an effective rhythm guitarist. Throughout the album, bassist Joel Forbes and drummer Chuck Riggs, the other regular members of Allen’s quartet demonstrate that having a working band can assure benfits of rhythm and cohesiveness. This is a consistently satisfying group.
The Reptet
The album the squeaking-wheel publicist kept plugging, nicely but persistently, is Do This! by a Seattle band, The Reptet. In common with Harry Allen’s group, they do not have a piano. Nor do they have a guitar, which leaves the sextet free of a chording instrument to provide harmonic guidance. That leads to some soloists being cast adrift on the waters of free jazz without a paddle, but there is a redeeming sense of joy, whimsy and almost reckless abandon in much of the skilled ensemble writing and playing. Some of it has echoes of Hindemith, Milhaud, and, in keeping with that line of musical thought, voicings remarkably like those in certain pieces by the Dave Brubeck Octet. There are also elements of street-corner brass bands, third stream composers and the Charles Mingus of Tijuana Moods, to single out only three of the disparate influences I think I hear.
Much of the writing is by the trumpeter Samantha Boshnack, with additional pieces by reed players Tobi Stone and Izaak Mill and bassist Benjamin Verdier. The other members are trombonist Ben O’Shea and drummer John Ewing. Stone, Mills, O’Shea and Ewing have stimulating solo moments. I admit that I was moved to listen to The Reptet by, in addition to the phone calls, the fact that four of the compositions are titled “Zeppo,” “Harpo,” “Chico” and “Groucho.” I am happy to report that they live up to their names. And, yes, “Harpo” gets an introduction by an actual harp. I also like the occasional unexpected, but quite discreet, group and individual vocal touches that include shouts and moans. Great fun.
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
