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Hot jazz for dog days...: You can reach right out and touch the sky, so goes the old song by Mungo Jerry.  Well, if you take one renowned steel drum player and two good old southern Alabama boys on trombone and trumpet you have the perfect modern accompaniment to summer fun and global warming blues.

Harry and Ken Watters perform on bone and trumpet, respectively, and Andy Narell is one of the finest steel drum players on the planet. Now forget about those guys downtown who panhandle for change as they perform yet another smarmy rendition of some old Police or Elton John tune, Narell is a graceful and inspired steel drum practitioner, as familiar with party drinks as John Coltrane's Africa Brass. Together with the Watters siblings, the trio dips deep into that Tiki fragranced land once populated by the likes of Martin Denny and Les Baxter.

The Island of Dr. Trombone conjures '50s themes like The Island Of Dr. Moreau, or cheesy B&W movies like Creature From The Black Lagoon. The album's cover art depicts Harry Watters chest deep in some azure lagoon blowing his bone to beat the band. The repertoire consists of some unforgivable cornpone like "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life," as well as comelier versions of "Here Comes The Sun," "Fiesta Bay," "Basin Street Blues," and, gulp, "Theme from ‘I Dream of Jeanie.' "  "The Trainer on the Beach" swings high, but grooves low, like a five pm siesta where the warmth is beginning to dip just as your buzz is beginning to soar.

We're talking some serous jazz pedigree dipping their toes into warm water. Harry Watters performed with the Dukes Of Dixieland for many years, Ken Watters counts Frank Sinatra, Joe Lovano, and Kenny Wheeler among his past employers, and Narell has recorded 11 solo albums and two more as co-leader of the Caribbean Jazz Project (with Paquito D'Rivera and Dave Samuels). Narell pioneered the role of the steel pan in contemporary music, recording with artists as diverse as Chucho Valdes, Bela Fleck, Aretha Franklin, and Toto. Hold the line!

Harry Watters "Fiesta Bay" (mp3)
from "The Island of Dr. Trombone"
by Harry Watters with Andy Narell & Ken Watters
(Summit Records)
More On This Album

 

 

Get Ready. Get Macked. Eat dirt, sucker.:  Carl Allen and Rodney Whitaker are two tough dudes. Just check out the cover of their latest album, Get Ready. Dark pinstriped suits, natty hats, and equally correct ties - they look like a coupla made Mafia guys circa 1956. And given their serious jazz resumes and the sort of post bop scene they espouse, late '50s/early '60s is the locus of their world, and hence, this mighty swinging album.

Allen and Whittaker on bass and drums, respectively (welcome to duo land!), aim to revive (or is that inhabit?) the lauded jazz rhythm section machines of the '60s, recalling giants like Tony Williams and Ron Carter, Elvin Jones and Richard Davis, Philly Joe Jones and Paul Chambers. Those titans blazed jazz trails in an amazing era of musical history, their skills inspired by melodic geniuses like Miles Davis and John Coltrane.  To repeat the past, or worship it, is a study in nostalgia.  But Allen and Whitaker, beyond nostalgic navel gazing, possess a special grooving connection. The pair lock-step and swing like a well oiled clock on ‘roids, dryly driving such tunes as "La Shea's Walk" and "Summer (The Sweet Goodbye)" with sweet aplomb.  We're talking serious grace and flow, akin to the work of Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan and drumming great Kenny Washington, all practitioners of a particular brand of urbane swing style that had its birth in Harlem and its perfect expression in Swing Street era clubs like Birdland, Band Box, 3 Deuces, and Café Carousel.

"Summer (The Sweet Goodbye)" begins in slow mo flow, but soon gets the up-kick via Allen's hot sticking repartee. His ensuing solo is a study in jazz history, a percolating hi-hat pulse underpinning fiery punctuations and scalding full set combinations. Here, the titanic duo spit, kick and burn the earth clean with their exceptionally precise time twists. Pianist Cyrus Chestnut, guitarist Rodney Jones, organist Dorsey "Rob" Robinson, and saxophonist Steve Wilson add to the fireworks and the considerable soul. As Allen and Whitaker both hail from Detroit, soul is an all important ingredient in Get Ready. Soul, for sure, is impossible to quantify. When it's there (Aretha) you know it, when it's lacking or simply a pose (Joss Stone), it hurts.

Allen and Whitaker's collective soul also alights in "La Shea's Walk," the kind of classic side-to-side swayer that is the very meaning of swing.  Jones' breezy chordal work is especially hip, like corn popping on hot asphalt. Get Ready, get down.

Carl Allen & Rodney Whitaker: "La Shea's Walk"  (MP3, 8:04)