John Brown Trio: Dancing with Duke

Brown Boulevard Records
By Ric Bang
Buy CD: Dancing with Duke

John Brown is a master of many skills. He began to play the double bass when he was just 9, and hardly big enough to reach the full range of the strings. He has an extensive education, having graduated from both the University of North Carolina-Greensboro School of Music, and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Law. He teaches at several universities in North Carolina, including Duke; he plays with several symphony orchestras; he’s a “first-sought” bassist as a sideman; and he fronts his own trio, quintet and larger groups.

And occasionally sleeps.

He has performed with numerous name artists and vocalists — including the Marsalis clan, Rosemary Clooney and Diahann Carroll — and he won a Grammy Award as a co-writer of Nnenna Freelon’s album Shaking Free.

Dancing With Duke, Brown’s second album, was released from his own studio.

Brown worships Duke Ellington, and this release features 10 of the latter’s most famous tunes. As the album title implies, each track is done at a danceable tempo ... which is to say, close dancing: the kind enjoyed by couples in love ... or falling in that direction. Even the relatively up-tempo tunes are done at a danceable pace. That’s unusual these days, particularly with a trio.

Brown is backed by pianist Cyrus Chestnut and drummer Adonis Rose: one of the tightest, highly grooving rhythm sections I’ve heard in a long time. Even if you haven’t danced for awhile, these guys make you want to move your feet. Chestnut’s style, a delightful combination of gospel and light bop, fits perfectly with Brown’s solid beat; Rose also is a solid and tasteful compliment to the group.

As for the tunes selected, I’m particularly moved by this rendition of “Solitude.” You don’t often hear a bowed bass solo, and this one is superb. You’ll recognize many of these standards — “In a Mellow Tone,” “Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me,” “Perdido,” “I’m Beginning to See the Light” and “I Got It Bad” — and it’s refreshing to hear the lesser-known “Pie Eye’s Blues” and “A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing.”

All in all, this is a neat album.

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.