Here are A.D. Amorosi’s monthly picks, coming to you the last Tuesday of the month.
Jon Batiste, Big Money (Verve Records)
As far as jazz is concerned, pianist-singer-showman Jon Batiste never really stuck to a script. Sure, he paid tribute to John Lewis and Thelonious Monk and tickled the keys for some buoyant, bawdy hot jazz that’d make Fats Waller blush. But ever since his time bandleading for Stephen Colbert’s Late Show and making global Grammy-winning soul, Batiste’s Technicolored tastes have only grown more VistaVision.
Big Money, then, is a welcome change (or relief) in that he’s plucked his peacocking feathers and stripped down his sound (and broad lyrics) to something warmly intimate, gospel-folksy and jazzy-blue in a manner reminiscent of an ebullient Ray Charles. Covering The Genius’s “Lonely Avenue” is a great way to parse that devotion, especially since Batiste’s caramel croon gets paired with soot-and-salted singer Randy Newman for a match made on Bourbon Street.
Batiste stays close to church during “Big Money” (with the Womack Sisters’ rising harmonies meeting him halfway to Heaven), the holy-rolling jazz balladry of “Do It All Again” and the lilting “Angels.” Purists may grouse, but for those desirous of wild improvisational bliss, check out “Maybe,” and tell me that Jon Batiste isn’t jazz.
Chicago Underground Duo, Hyperglyph (International Anthem)
For a time between 1997 and the mid-2010s, there was so much Chicago Underground electro-laced everything, from trumpeter-cornetist-synthesist Rob Mazurek and drummer-percussionist Chad Taylor — be it Duo, Trio, Quartet, Orchestra and whatever configuration from their equally below-the-surface pals from São Paulo — that amorphous avant-garde jazz seemed solely the property of the Windy City.
The insistently tremoring title track to Hyperglyph is marvel enough to make the pair’s first new album in 11 years a worthy vessel as its dense, underlying sequencer hum-undulates nervously, leaving Mazurek to bray like an elephant and Taylor to take on the role of a hundred-person college drumline. Equally energetic and Mali-inspired multi-percussive and bell-filled, but in a lighter, breezier fashion is “Click Song,” Here, Mazurek’s trumpet is fuzzily distorted and oddly chipper — a mid-1960s hot production mix of Herb Alpert and Sun Ra’s Chris Capers in Heliocentric Worlds mode — with a synthetic descending bassline that kills. Pretty much the album of August.
Colin Hancock’s Jazz Hounds with Catherine Russell, Cat & the Hounds (Turtle Bay Records)
Let me get this right: Colin Hancock is an Afro-Romani cornetist and saxophonist who has taken up the mission of 1920s Black jazz and vintage shouty blues with his band of renown, the Jazz Hounds, wailing, simmering vocalist Catherine Russell and booming bass saxophonist Vince Giordano along for the ride? Fantastic.
Part neo-ragtime revival, part naughty, nuancing escapade, part hysterical history lesson, Hancock & Co. conjure up the restless vaudevillian spirits of Ethel Waters, six-string banjo titan Johnny St. Cyr and cornetist Harry Tate by turning up the heat (and the volume) for the 1925-vintage “Sweet Man.”
The full, flowering Jazz Hounds team gathers no moss and rolls the raw ore rock of Alberta Hunter’s “Everybody Mess Around” into a deep blues jazzy holler with Russell and tubist Kerry Lewis blowing up each other’s skirts. Mamie Smith’s 1926 “Goin’ Crazy with the Blues” is an electric, high-wire balancing act between Russell’s rebellious yell and trombonist Dion Tucker’s screaming brass fantasy.
Originally conceived by George Wein as a foundational “History of Jazz” showcase for the 2020 Newport Jazz Festival and its nu-traditionalists, Colin Hancock’s rough, vibrant sound — best played at full volume — would make the late concert titan happy indeed.
Nate Smith, LIVE-ACTION (Naïve Records)
Drummer, composer and knob-twiddler Nate Smith’s multidisciplinary approach to music (and the many sessions he’s played and/or produced for Michael Jackson, Pat Metheny, Paul Simon, Dave Holland, Brittany Howard and José James) pretty much requires him to be a bit undisciplined. That’s exactly why the in-the-pocket percussionist can pull from the dramatic blues of Sonny Boy Williamson and the snapping, guttural beats of J Dilla for the aptly titled, dirtball cinematics of “Juke Joint” with acid jazzbo Charlie Hunter, then turn on a dime for the minor key, low-to-the-ground polyrhythmic groove of “Automatic” (yes, a Pointer Sisters cover, but with Lalah Hathaway’s harmonies), before the gently detuned, quiet storming elegance of “Supermoon.”
On occasion, that quiet-storming stuff gets Smith in trouble, as slow slinkers such as “LastSight” and the opening track, “Now” — both featuring future-forward saxophonist Josh Johnson — veer too close to wine bar–blasting smooth jazz for my tastes. What saves LIVE-ACTION from a fatal dose of slickness, however, is how Smith manages to make every track here just a tad off-kilter, infusing each melody with a whammy bar’s wonkiness. That’s a compliment. JT