Andy Jaffe, Manhattan Projections, Reissue

Pianist, arranger, composer Andy Jaffe runs a gamut between hard-bopping mid-sized ensemble jazz and piano duets on the reissued Manhattan Projections (Big Round 8922).

Andy sounds great throughout and he is in some fast company. Smitty Smith, drums, Branford Marsalis on soprano and tenor, Wallace Roney, trumpet, John Clark, French horn, Tom McClung, second piano, and a host of others make some very good contributions in a series of three lineups from 1984, 1991 and 1998.

The pieces are together and the players are in the pocket.

It's straight-ahead and well-played. I hope we soon can hear more of his work and what he is doing now.

Larry Vuckovich, Somethin' Special: Hard Bop, NuOldBeBop and Old Thing Done Right

Here in the waning days of 2011 it strikes me that one of the hardest things to do right is what many jazz musicians are attempting today, to play in an older, more traditional style in a way that not only rings true, but also rings good, that's worth hearing.

Larry Vuckovich's Somethin' Special (Tetrachord Music 686) does that, all of that. He picked the right guys for this: tenor reconstructionist Scott Hamilton, a man who recrafts classic styles like no one else and so consistently so; Noel Jewkes on soprano and tenor, a player I'll admit I have not heard since Jerry Hahn's old Arhoolie album from the '60s, still sounding great; rhythm teammates Paul Keller on bass and Chuck McPherson, drums, with the right notes, the right sound, the right leverage. Then of course Larry himself, playing a fully ten-digit piano with the harmonic flourish and the soulful right hand. Mix nine jazz and songbook standards with a couple of Vuckovich originals and...presto, an album that sounds good coming out of the gate, at the finish line and on the hairpin turns in between.

Why is it so is hard to pinpoint exactly? Maybe it isn't in the end. Learning the right notes to play does not mean that you can do a credible job working in this style. The masters of hard and be did more than string notes together, of course. They cultivated a sound, something you cannot notate with any precision. And they played (swung) in a style that also involved infinitely gradatable points of attack, again which cannot be set down with any easily read accuracy onto music paper. It's something you feel, intuit, bring out in your playing. And they are doing it here.

Scott Hamilton makes a great example because he channels a tenor sound steeped in the nuances of past masters and has impeccable timing. By now it's hard to say, like a Romper Room session with the Magic Mirror, "I hear Hawk, and I hear Lester, oh, and there's Arnette Cobb and Lockjaw Davis, Ben Webster..." and so on. Because he's internalized it all and made it his own. Larry V. is his own man too, incorporating all the nuances and subtleties of the style without copping licks.

Hey, this is a good one. It is. Listen to it a couple times and you'll see!

The Jonathan Parker Group Holds Forth From Shanghai

Where I stand with hard bop is where I stand with a number of styles. It has to have that "some- thing" or there's no use even trying. Hard bop done right is not a music that some old lady would say of, "Oh my, that's nice!" At least not the old ladies that were old when I was young. The one's with the floral sack dresses who could still make cookies like they came from heaven. Cookies and old stories they were an excellent source for, but you would not be likely to find them popping on a Blue Note scorcher by Lee Morgan.

As we sit perched on a time crest that my calender insists is 2011, we have seen the rise, fall and rise of a number of styles. Hard bop is one of them. Like anything subject to flux, its triumphant return does not necessarily mean it has come back exactly as it was when it more or less became under eclipse. At least not in the right hands.

Such hands I would assert belong to Jonathan Parker, an altoist-bandleader who has spend a number of years in China, and recorded an album with his group over there simply dubbed The Jonathan Parker Group (self-released, no cat #). It's him with a piano-bass-drums quartet and cameo appearances by four additional players (bone, tenor, guitar, trumpet).

Jonathan clearly has dug Bird, Jackie McLean, and probably Phil Woods, and no doubt others. He has a searing tone that goes well with the fiery lines he coaxes from his horn. They are supercharged, which is only fitting for a hard-bop date. His fellow musical compatriots are primed and know the idiom well.

The set of originals on the album are worthy vehicles for the swinging-blowing goings on. And the goings on will appeal to anyone who digs the style. With the compositions and the way Maestro Parker goes at it, this is in the realm of EXTENSION, certainly not REGURGITATION. So bravo for that!

You can get a nice sounding download of the album for $4 at http://jonathan-parker.bandcamp.com. For that amount, if you like what you read here, you can hardly go wrong.

Elliott Caine Sextet Live On "Hippie Chicks" CD

Despite the psychedelic title (Hippie Chicks On Acid)(Wondercap 07006) and the tongue-in-cheek cover art, this CD documents a modern hard bop sextet date shading into energy territory (something like Lee Morgan in the Lighthouse period).

Trumpeter Elliott Caine has that extroverted, big brassy sound of the Navarro-Brown through Morgan-Shaw school. His sextet has notable other solo voices too--Carl Randall on tenor, Maheesh Balasooriya on piano, Nick Mancini, vibes; and a crack bass-drums team of Bill Markus and Kenny Elliott, respectively.

This puts you into gear with 65 minutes of live immediacy. The tunes are effective blowing vehicles written by Mr. Caine in a later Blue Note boldness of style.

Your enjoyment of Hippie Chicks will have a direct relation to where you stand vis-a-vis this style. It's music that brims over with life. While it probably won't win any awards this year, it will find a welcome place in your collection for its fire and honest free-swinging approach.

Benny Sharoni, New Tenor on the Block

To start a review off by noting that tenor-sax man Benny Sharoni was born on a kibbutz in Israel and grew up there, that his father was originally from Yemen, that he has studied with Jerry Bregonzi and George Garzone would imply that all of that is relevant to what he plays on his debut CD Eternal Elixir (Papaya Records). Well I don't know that it isn't. He does seem to be quite fluent in the modern jazz treatment of the minor mode and there's a ballsy not-quite-mainstream approach (if you associate the mainstream with music that can be anemic, which it can these days) that Bergonzi and Garzone have in common.

That all assumes that musicians are nothing but an algebraic proportion of the cultural milieu of their upbringing and education. We know that cannot fully account for what makes somebody thrive, nor does it account for the particular combination of elements in any artist's way of creating. Like for example I happen to have cultivated a life-long love for Dostoevsky and Melville, but I don't think it explains how I write, exactly.

So let's cut to the quick. I like this album and I like Sharoni's playing. It's modern, nuanced, and has the ability to fire up or remain tranquil according to the song and the mood. If I hear a trace of Joe Henderson plus Bergonzi, Garzone and Lovano in his playing, all the better, since I do like those players very much. His fellow session mates are well-chosen. Mike Mele shines on his guitar solo spots, Barry Ries plays a puckery trumpet with roots in the '60s masters of the instrument, the alternating piano work of Joe Barbato and Kyle Aho can be filled with the old-school hard bopper's way or a post-Tyner bag, depending, but they are good exponents, and the rhythm team of Todd Baker (bass) and Steve Langone (drums) are solid.

This is hard-bop-and-beyond blowing. It's no accident that Sharoni spices up his interesting originals with some classic Blue Mitchell and Donald Byrd. Hebb's "Sunny" is not one that I would expect, but Sharoni does something on his solo, so. . . then "To Life" evokes another musical trunk that it would be natural for someone like Sharoni to reference, as we imply (but does not explain HOW he references it).

My only quibble is about the tradition and what we choose to maintain of it. Byrd's "Pentecostal Feeling" was one of those Blue Note boogaloos that found its way onto jukeboxes in the mid-sixties. In that period just about every Blue Note record had at least one of those numbers, because there was a community of listeners that dug it.

It's an old style and I am not sure it speaks to us today as much as some other aspects of the tradition. I'll be honest. I'd really rather listen to James Brown do something in this mode, because he and his band could smoke it to the high heavens. The jazz boogaloo thing always seemed to be (and still does) a kind of watering down of the electrifying experience of hearing Mr. Brown do it. What if every rock act were to be obliged to do a twist song? Not all of the past needs to be rehashed, and we can always go back to the originals. That's not to take away from the whole thing, but it's a personal bugaboo with me. And it is only a small part of what's on this album.

Benny Sharoni shows he can play, really play on Eternal Elixir. It's a fine outing and gives notice that here is a player! Bravo for that.

Curtis Fuller, Hard Bop Bone Master in Full Force

Curtis Fuller was (and is) one of the handful of master hard bop trombonists. After J. J. Johnson, it could be said with much justification that he did most to advance the style in the late '50s through the sixties. Certainly his contributions to a particularly wonderful Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers lineup were seminal, as were his own solo outings, not to mention "Blue Trane."

He is active today. Very active. You can hear how active in his new 2-CD set I Will Tell Her (Capri 74100-2). This has one studio and one live disk, both with a solid sextet that includes some nice playing by Keith Oxman, tenor, and Al Hood, trumpet. Don Sickler contributes the charts, at least on the studio date, and he is at his usual level of craftsman-like inspiration. The music is a good mix of originals and jazz standards.

Now I'm not going to tell you that this CD package contains music that will change the face of music in the next 20 years. No. What it does is show you that Curtis Fuller, though he may not be giving out with as many 32nd note runs these days, remains a vital player. One note from Curtis and you know. He gets something on all of them. A master phraser of finesse. Listen to his ballad rendition of the title cut. The album is dedicated to his wife of long standing, and how he feels comes out there, whammo. But then he can swing the house down too.

Trombone lovers take note. Music lovers take note. Curtis Fuller still has that extra something. Hear it at length on this one and enjoy the ride!

Charles Tolliver Big Band at the Blue Note

Charles Tolliver is one of those trumpet/bandleaders whose relative eclipse over time is, from a musical standpoint, inexplicable. I will not attempt to fathom why in this space. Rather, I would like to celebrate his last Half Note release, Emperor March: Live at the Blue Note.

This is excellent big band jazz with the emphasis on what Tolliver has always been into, which is the hard bop/post-bop nexus of Trane, his sidemen and followers, and of course, Tolliver himself. The band is hot, the music steams and Tolliver shows himself still vital. This belongs with the very best big-band releases of last year. Much ink has been spilled about it so I will only reaffirm. Dig in and dig yourself out of the winter doldrums with this one.