i’m a blue note junky. love that hard-bop sound. there’s no mistaking it once you hear it — think “the sidewinder” or “moanin’” — and once you get an eye for that cover art, there’s no missing it in the bins:
but it was hard bop’s funkier cousin — soul jazz — that first got me hooked. blues-based and infectious, less harmonically complex. greasy. can you say crossover appeal?
from the mid-’50s through the late-’60s, blue note recorded some of the hottest soul-jazz sessions ever to be pressed on vinyl. small, organ-based combos that absolutely COOKED.
there was a whole roster of hammond b3 greats: lonnie smith. reuben wilson. jack mcduff. jimmy mcgriff. big john patton. baby face willette. and — perhaps most famously — the incredible jimmy smith.
i’ve listened to these albums from side to side, over and over — either original pressings or reissues on cd. i cut my collecting teeth behind the counter at skippy white’s in the quarter. i’ve seen jimmy (rest in peace), reuben, and lonnie play live. i lived in new orleans for two years — i’ve seen the best of the best. on a nightly basis. for free.
so when i say that tony monaco is perhaps one of the greatest b3 players living today, listen closely because i’m not making this *$%# up. consider the context of the claim. and when i tell you that you can see his trio play for free virtually every wednesday night at the ravari room around 10:30ish, well — need i say more?
sure, the toilets in the men’s room rarely flush. and, yes, it gets kind of late if you have to work the next morning. but trust me: you’ll dig it if you go. as someone once said about experiencing “master chops t” live: you haven’t heard tony, until you’ve seen tony.
that’s the truth.
read some recent articles on tony here, here, here, and here.
next gig: 4/11/07 (tonight!)
drums — louis tsamous
guitar — robert kraut
hammond b3 — tony monaco
“backward shack”
[ed. note: from the 2001 album burnin' grooves. lineup's a little different here -- derek dicenzo on guitar -- but you get the gist. the head kind of sounds like an inversion of jimmy's "back at the chicken shack," to which i think the title's alluding.
louis and robert round out a TIGHT trio. no slouches here. louis' got this sort of charlie watt-ish nonchalance back there; and robert -- who's a professor of philosophy at osu and whose paper "why does jazz matter to aesthetic theory?" i'd love to get my hands on -- just plain rips it.]
