Ben Markley Big Band: Clockwise

OA2 Records
By Ric Bang
Buy CD: Clockwise

All jazz fans know pianist, composer and arranger Cedar Walton. He was born in 1934 and immersed in the scene at the same time as Art Tatum, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, but was best known for his association with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Many of Walton’s charts are legendary, and are staples in the books of name combos and big bands throughout the jazz world.

Every tune in this tribute album by Markley is a Walton original.

Markley is a pianist, educator, composer and arranger; he heads the big band featured in this release. He’s an active performer in the Denver area, and is director of jazz studies at the University of Wyoming. He also teaches applied jazz piano and improvisation. 

His group here is standard: five reeds, four trumpets — including the famed Terell Stafford — four trombones, and a rhythm section of piano, bass and drums. Two tracks also feature guitar. This tasty result has earned rave reviews, including four-and-a-half stars from Downbeat.

Walton’s compositions were always swingers at any tempo, and Markley maintains that level of excellence. As an added bonus, the chord structure and changes made possible by the use of full reed and brass sections makes “everything old, new again.” The artists have been given plenty of room for solos, and they make good use of every opportunity.

I hadn’t heard Stafford for awhile, and had forgotten what a groovin’ horn player he is.

It’s terrific to hear a truly excellent band swing like this one. Purists who yearn for those good ol’ days — and the wonderful groups that rocked us back then — will find that this album brings back some great memories, and satisfies the soul.

Holiday Jazz 2000: ’Tis the season to be wary

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.14.00

[Web master’s note: Northern California film critic Derrick Bang — the eldest, youngest and only son of this site’s jazz guru, Ric Bang — has surveyed the holiday jazz scene since the late 1990s, with lengthy columns that just keep growing.]


I got word, a month back, that music labels would be considerably more cautious with holiday releases this year, because sales were “flat” in 1999. No surprise, really; after enjoying a level of modest popularity and producing smallish — but reliable — profits for several decades, seasonal releases exploded in 1998 and ’99. Everybody had to release a holiday album, and of course many didn’t find the listeners they deserved.

That’s what happens when the market gets flooded: We all drown, artist and fan alike.

This year’s seasonal music releases are fewer and further between, and that’s particularly true of holiday jazz, where a couple of labels have adopted the tactic employed by the U.S. Postal Service, which simply recycled last year’s reindeer stamps.

Thus, Concord has resurrected two 1997 releases, spruced ’em up with new cover art and new titles, and released them anew.

I call that pretty damn sneaky.

In fairness, both are worth adding to your library; just make sure you don’t already own them.

Piano fans can’t do better than Dave McKenna’s Christmas Party: Holiday Piano Spiked with Swing (Concord CCD 4923-2, previously issued as Christmas Ivory, CCD-4772-2), an ambitious, one-man collection of superb solo work: blues, stride, swing rag and anything else the then-67-year-old acoustic phenomenon set his mind to. It’s a grand series of cuts by a guy who knows he doesn’t need to impress listeners with needless flash; his renditions of “Silver Bells’’ and “Silent Night,’’ in particular, are poignant in their quiet clarity.

But this isn’t a sedate album by any means; McKenna swings and boogies his way through plenty of up-tempo covers of everything from “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” to “Sleigh Ride,” while including a perky original dubbed “An Eggnog, Some Mistletoe and You.” Good stuff.