Slinky, Sophisticated Organ Jazz That Might Have Slipped Under the Radar

Dr. Pam Popper, who has emerged as one of the brightest lights  since the 2020 lockdown, has made a big deal of the fact that no matter how disturbing the current situation becomes, we can’t afford to let our joie de vivre be stolen from us. And what’s better to lift our spirits than funky organ jazz? Jared Gold, one of the most sophisticated organists in that demimonde, is leading a trio tomorrow night, June 22 at Smalls, with sets at 7:30 and a little after 9; cover is $25 cash at the door.

Gold has put out plenty of good albums of his own: his 2012 release Golden Child is the most distinctive and in its own defiantly thorny way, maybe the best of the bunch. A record that’s probably closer to what he’s likely to deliver in a venue like Smalls is guitarist Dave Stryker‘s slinky but urbane Baker’s Circle, streaming at Bandcamp (Gold has been Stryker’s main man on organ for quite awhile). Like a lot of albums that came out during the dead zone of the winter of 2021, it’s flown under the radar, which is too bad because it’s a great party record.

The first of Stryker’s originals here is the opening track, Tough – a briskly shuffling, catchy, soul-infused Styker original full of precise, warmly bending guitar lines, bright tenor sax from Walter Smith III and subtle flashes from across drummer McClenty Hunter’s kit. Gold stays on track with the band in his solo, with his steady blues riffage.

There’s lithely tumbling latin flair in the second track, El Camino, matched by Smith’s precise, chromatic downward cascades, Stryker’s drive toward a spiraling attack and a tantalizingly brief Gold solo.

Smith and Gold harmonize tersely over the tricky syncopation of Dreamsong, the bandleader channeling a late 50s soul-jazz vibe over lurking, resonant organ. They make tightly strutting swing out of Cole Porter’s Everything I Love, with carefree yet judicious lines from both the bandleader and then Gold. The lone Gold tune here is the aptly titled, scampering Rush Hour, with rambunctious solos from Smith and then Stryker.

The quartet rescue Leon Russell’s early 70s tune Superstar from the circle of hell occupied by groups like the Carpenters, then launch into the title track, the last of the Stryker originals. No spoilers about what jazz classic that one nicks: percussionist Mayra Casales adds subtle boom to the low end.

Likewise, they play Marvin Gaye’s Inner City Blues as a tightly straight-up clave tune with Stryker’s spikiest work here, Gold’s edge in contrast with Smith’s balmy approach. Stryker finally goes for Wes Montgomery homage in Love Dance, by Ivan Lins. They close the record with Trouble (No. 2), a reworking of the old Lloyd Price hit that while short of feverish, owes a lot to Peggy Lee.

If you’re wondering what the album title refers to, it’s a shout-out to Stryker’s mentor and guitar teacher David Baker.

Drummer Kresten Osgood Airs Out His Funky Chops on Hammond Organ

Here in the west we emphasize musical specialization to the point of absurdity. In the Middle East and Africa, pretty much everybody is expected to be a competent drummer: after that. you find your own axe or axes. In that context, it’s less surprising that Kresten Osgood, the popular Danish drummer, would also turn out to be a very inspired organist. His new album, Kresten Osgood Plays the Organ for You is due to hit his Bandcamp page on June 3.

After playing behind the kit for organists including Dr. Lonnie Smith and Billy Preston, Osgood decided to take matters into his own hands and leave the organ envy behind. The result is a purposeful, thoughtful party record.

The opening number. Play it Back features Osgood’s steady, catchy, vampy riffage over a loose-limbed groove with Fridolin Nordsø on chicken-scratch wah-wah guitar, Ludomir Dietl on drums and Arto Eriksen on percussion. Exactly what you would expect from a drummer: everybody is in on the beats!

Osgood really chooses his spots from there, spacing his clusters, spirals and a logical, playful counterpoint in the second track, Poinciana. The group make their way through the slowly swaying thicket of percussion in Wildfire, a catchy Booker T-style theme with an incisive, psychedelic wah solo from Nordsø

Når lyset Bryder Frem – “when the lights go on,” roughly translated – is a warmly major-key retro 60s soul-funk tune. Osgood wraps his hands around some big chords in his longest, most undulating tune here, Baby Let Me Take You in My Arms, Nordsø taking off into space and spinning back down to earth before the jungle of beats takes centerstage.

The band pick up with a harder edge in Onsaya Joy, then Osgood launches into the catchiest, but also most complex number on the album, Dansevise, with its shifts between major and minor, jazz and 60s psychedelic soul.

The quartet wind up the record with a bouncy midtempo funk cover of By The Time I Get to Phoenix Osgood artfully edging his way into the melody. His next New York gig is behind the kit on May 28 at 6:30 PM at Downtown Music Gallery, in an interesting improvisational trio with trumpeter Herb Robertson and tuba player Marcus Rojas.

Sophisticated Gutbucket Party Music and a Smalls Show Tonight by Nick Hempton

On one hand, saxophonist Nick Hempton is a throwback to an earlier era when jazz was the default party music throughout urban areas coast to coast. But he’s also found a way to push the envelope with a funky, percolating organ jazz sound. He’s leading a killer quartet at 10:30 PM tonight, April 10 at Smalls, with Akiko Tsuruga, a similarly sly and inventive player on organ. If you stick around, you can watch the club’s legendary nightly jam session afterward at midnight; cover is $25 cash at the door. Smalls is the only place in town that offers a cash discount: those too lazy or clueless to use cash have to fork over $40.

Hempton released his latest album Slick – streaming at Bandcamp – late last year, with his longtime “dream team” bandmates Peter Bernstein on guitar, Kyle Koehler on organ and Fukushi Tainaka on drums. What hits you right upside the head is that this about tunes, not just ostentatious soloing: it’s rare that a saxophonist plays so few notes as a bandleader, yet makes them all count.

They open with The Runaround, a purposeful, catchy stroll. The highlights are in the subtleties, most notably in Tainaka’s little against-the-current flourishes. Hempton has a thing for noir, exemplified here in the latinized Vegas shuffle Liar’s Dice, which he takes in a more playfully shuffling direction. The cotton is high, but in the distance, in Born to Be Blue, a lingering but purposeful ballad.

Hempton leads the group through the lickety-split volleys of Short Shrift with his lightning articulacy on alto sax. Switching back to tenor, he salutes his jazz-loving octogenarian neighbor in the energetically bluesy swing tune Upstairs Eddy, testament to how fast New York musicians learn who our friends (and enemies) are.

He and the band take a balmy tiptoe swing through their take of People Will Say We’re in Love: one of the coolest moments is where Bernstein takes a solo and Koehler adjusts his drawbars to where it’s almost as if he’s playing rhythm guitar. Likewise, the guitarist leads a very subtle diversion in Hempton’s melody to introduce a slinky Koehler solo in the next track, Snake Oil.

The Gypsy here is a laid-back gutbucket organ jazz regular who winks at all the girls, but they love him anyway. Hempton saves the most expansive tracks for last – who knows, maybe his approach to recording live in the studio without headphones resulted in having some extra time left over. So they made the most of it, first in Fryin’ With Fergus, a bluesy midtempo tune where Hempton gets to indulge in some carefree but devious tradeoffs with Koehler and Tainaka. They close with The Masquerade Is Over, giving the wistful changes an optimistic swing. Wine-hour escapist music for those outside of Ukraine who still have electric power? Sure, why not. After all we’ve been through these past two years, we deserve music like this.

Broodingly Gorgeous, Tightly Orchestrated Sounds From Organist Bence Vas’ Big Band

Large ensembles led by organists are about the rarest of any configuration of jazz musicians, yet they all seem to find this page. The 8 Cylinder Big Band, Radam Schwartz Organ Big Band, and now the stunningly mysterious Bence Vas’ Big Band, who might be the best of all of them. Their riveting, very tightly orchestrated Bartok-inspired new album Overture et. al. is streaming at Spotify. If you don’t agree that some of the best jazz in the world is coming out of Hungary, you haven’t heard this darkly elegant record. 

Vas weaves a series of stunningly memorable themes methodically and dynamically throughout this often sinister suite. It opens with a big swell from the deliciously noir overture, Vas and pianist Gábor Cseke scurrying with furtive purpose down to a precise, loopy piano solo and subtle, moody variations as the orchestra drift in and disappear just as suddenly. A detour toward comfortably clustering early 60s Prestige-style postbop sounds fueled by Cseke cedes centerstage to the bandleader’s eerily keening phrases, up and out.

The Overture at Late Afternoon takes that distantly Ethiopian-tinged chromatic riffage to even creepier new places, from a circling intro, through still, tense foreshadowing and a somber woodwind-infused sway. Cseke once again adds a convivial touch, then the requiem for what’s left of the afternoon returns. Vas’ judicious solo raises the intensity, classic gutbucket harmonies tinted with just enough menace to raise the disquiet, eventually bringing the gathering gloom full circle. As lockdown-era music goes, this really nails the zeitgeist. 

Cseke’s clusters behind a wary march recede to an ominously minimalist flute solo over the orchestra’s brooding expanse as Jedna Minuta gathers steam. Elegiacally brassy variations and  fleeting flute gleam distantly amid the remaining expanse.

Kołysanka opens with balmy/moody contrasts fueled by guitar and flute until the bandleader lets the sunshine in with a gently gospel-infused, soulful groove that’s not quite a strut. They bring the chromatic menace back, the murk looms in and suddenly it’s over. The group close with One Last Attempt, Vas’ funeral-parlor atmosphere ushering in Cseke spirals, hovering brass and a brightly enigmatic Kristóf Bacsó alto sax solo in contrast with the darker flurries all around. That blustery false ending is a neat touch. It’s awfully early in the year to be thinking of the best jazz album of 2021 but right now the choice is between Satoko Fujii’s new vibraphone duo record and this one.

A Historic, Hard-Hitting New Album From the Radam Schwartz Organ Big Band

The new album by the Radam Schwartz Organ Big Band, Message From Groove and GW – streaming at Spotify – is the first-ever big band jazz release where the organist plays all the basslines. Dr. Lonnie Smith does that with his Octet, but they’re only eight guys in a world of even larger sounds. Historically, there have been very few big bands with an organ to begin with: Jimmy Smith with Oliver Nelson, and the mighty Eight Cylinder Bigband, to name a couple.

Here, Schwartz decides to walk the lows briskly all by himself, joined by the Abel Mireles’ Jazz Exchange Orchestra in a mix of imaginatively rearranged covers and originals. This isn’t just esoterica for B3 diehards: this is a rare example of gritty gutbucket organ jazz beefed up with bright, hefty horn harmonies, rather than a big band that happens to have an organ as a solo instrument.

Schwarz takes considerable inspiration from Richard “Groove” Holmes’ work with the Gerald Wilson Orchestra, notably two cuts on their album where Holmes took over the basslines. Schwartz opens his record with an original, Trouble Just Won’t Go Away, a brisk, catchy swing tune with punchy solos from throughout the group.

The band remake Coltrane’s Blues Minor with an ominous bluster anchored by the low brass, alto saxophonist Danny Raycraft’s solo setting up a searing, cascading one from the bandleader. The Aretha Franklin hit Ain’t No Way gets reinvented as a stampede with jaunty solos from trumpeter Ted Chubb, tenor saxophonist Gene Ghee and guitarist Charlie Sigler.

Dig You Like Crazy, another Schwartz original, has bustling, vintage Basie-style horns, with terse solos from Chubb, saxophonist Anthony Ware and then the organ. What to Do, a catchy Mireles tune, is more of an early 60s-style postbop number turbocharged with brass and organ, drummer David F. Gibson raising the energy very subtly at the end.

They do the Isley Bros.’ Between the Sheets as muted, pillowy funk, with slit-eyed solos from Sigler and Ware. Baritone saxophonist Ben Kovacs, trumpeter Ben Hankle and trombonist Andrae Murchison smoke and sputter and soar in Schwartz’s tightly clustering, bluesy title track.

Trombonist Peter Lin’s moodily shifting, latin-tinged A Path to Understanding features an ebullient solo from trumpeter Lee Hogans handing off to the composer’s lowdown turn out front, then the bandleader’s spirals and rapidfire triplets.

Schwartz charges into his epically swaying arrangement of the Mingus classic Work Song, Hankle contributing a hauntingly rustic muted solo echoed by Murchison, Ware and then the organ taking the energy to redline. Likewise, the brass – which also includes trumpeter James Cage – kick in hard. It’s the album’s big stunner. They wind up the record with a benedictory composition by Bach. Leave it to an organist to go for baroque at the end.

Wild, Surreal, Psychedelic Keyboard Mashups From Brian Charette

The latest artist to defiy the odds and put the grim early days of the lockdown to good use is Brian Charette, arguably the most cutting-edge organist in jazz. As you will see on his new solo album, Like the Sun – streaming at his music page – he plays a whole slew of other styles. Challenging himself to compose and improvise against a wild bunch of rhythmic loops in all sorts of weird time signatures, he pulled together one of his most entertaining records. This one’s definitely the most surreal, psychedelic and playful of all of them – and he has made a lot.

Basically, this is a guy alone in his man cave mashing up sounds as diverse as twinkly Hollywood Hills boudoir soul, squiggly dancefloor jams, P-Funk stoner interludes, Alan Parsons Project sine-wave vamps and New Orleans marches, most of them ultimately under the rubric of organ jazz.

At the heart of the opening track, 15 Minutes of Fame lies a catchy gutbucket Hammond organ riff and variations…in this case surrounded by all sorts of warpy textures and strange, interwoven rhythms. Time Piece, the second track, could be a synthy late 70s ELO miniature set to a shuffly drum machine loop, with a rapidfire B3 crescendo.

Slasher is not a horror theme but a reference to a chord with an unusual bass note – as Charette says in his priceless liner notes, “If they can get along, why can’t we?” This one’s basically a soul song without words with some tricky changes.

Honeymoon Phase could be a balmy Earth Wind and Fire ballad, Charette’s layers of keys taking the place of the brass. He builds the album’s title track around an Arabic vocal sample, with all sorts of wry touches surrounding a spacy, catchy theme and variations in 5/8 time.

Mela’s Cha Cha – inspired by Charette’s wife, the electrifyingly multistylistic singer Melanie Scholtz – is what might have happened if George Clinton, Larry Young and Ruben Blades were all in the same room together circa 1983. Three Lights has a warmly exploratory groove over a catchy bassline and a hypnotic syndrum beat.

Break Tune is a rare opportunity to hear Charette play guitar, adding a little Muscle Shoals flavor to this gospel-tinged, Spike Lee-influenced mashup. You might not expect a melody ripped “from a punchy synth brass preset on the Korg Minilogue,” as Charette puts it, or changes influenced by the great Nashville pianist Floyd Cramer in an organ jazz tune, but that’s what Charette is up to in From Like to Love.

Creole is a more traditional number, with a New Orleans-inflected groove and a handful of devious Joni Mitchell quotes. 7th St. Busker, inspired by a cellist playing on the street in the West Village, follows in the same vein but with a strange vocal sample underneath the good-natured, reflective organ solo.

Robot Heart would make a solid hip-hop backing track; Charette closes the record with 57 Chevy, a funky shout-out to Dr. Lonnie Smith, who goes back to that era.

Brian Charette Takes Organ Jazz to Edgy, Entertaining New Places

As Brian Charette tells it, his first solo organ record was a hit with his colleagues at baseball stadiums. Which makes sense. If an organist is a serious team player, he or she (thinking of Eddie Layton and Jane Jarvis here) can influence the outcome of a game. But first they have to engage a screaming mob, and be heard over them (unless it’s the Mets and there’s nobody there). Charette can’t resist an opportunity to entertain, although his sense of humor usually comes out in jousting with bandmates and making deadpan insider jokes rather than outright buffoonery. His follow-up solo album, Beyond Borderline – streaming at youtube – doesn’t seem to have any baseball subtext: it’s an endless supply of WTF moments interspersed among just about every possible style that might fit what Charette obviously sees as the very broad category of jazz organ. His next gig is not as a bandleader, but a relatively rare one as a sideman with hard-hitting saxophonist Mike DiRubbo‘s quartet at 10:30 PM this Friday and Saturday night, Jan 3 and 4 at Smalls.

The new album is a mix of solo versions of originals along with a couple of organ arrangements of Ellington tunes. Charette opens it with Yellow Car, a briskly strolling Jimmy Smith-style blues spiced with sly jabs and blips. He really cuts loose with his signature unpredictability in Wish List, a punchy, rhythmically shifting mashup of creepy Messiaen and jaunty Booker T. Jones (don’t laugh, it actually works). The first of the Ellington tunes, Chelsea Bridge gets reinvented with a triumphantly crescendoing resonance. The other one, Prelude to a Kiss validates Charette’s decision to go for grandeur.

The rest of the originals begins with Girls, a straight-up, catchy swing tune with a disquietingly atmospheric interlude midway through. The dark blues and latin influences really come to the forefront in Good Tipper – the title track of his 2014 album – Charette walking and strutting the bass with his lefthand beneath the mighty chords and spacious riffs of his right.

His solo take of one of his creepiest and best numbers, Hungarian Bolero, is evenmore minimalistically menacing as he fades the volume back and forth: it’s a little early in the year to be talking about best songs of the year, but this is one of them.

Silicone Doll is an organ arrangement of Satin Doll: Charette speeds it up a little. By the time you hit 5th of Rye, you may find yourself wondering, who needs bass and drums? His love of dub reggae and penchant for wry quotes come through in Aligned Arpeggio. Herman Enest III, a shout-out to Dr. John’s longtime drummer better known as Roscoe, has a recurring riff nicked from Joni Mitchell (or did she steal it from the Night Tripper?)

Charette winds up the album with Public Transportation, a bubbly, lickety-split tune that obviously  refers to some city other than New York, where the subway and buses actually run. As organ jazz records go, this is vastly more purposeful, original and less outright funky than what’s usually found in that demimonde.

Greg Lewis’ Organ Monk: A Completely Different, High-Voltage Beast

Organist Greg Lewis opened his set at the Provincetown Playhouse a couple of weeks ago with a mighty, sustained swell of tritones that grew more and more menacing as the sound swirled and smoked through his Leslie speaker. Then he launched into his first Thelonious Monk number of the night. In over an hour onstage, he took the crowd on a roller-coaster of whirlwind riffs, purist blues, phantasmagorial chromatics, a dip into gritty noir, then up and out with a torrential take of Monk’s Four in One.

Lewis calls this project Organ Monk – and was giving away free t-shirts to spread the gospel of Monk on the organ, a “completely different beast” compared to the man in the hat’s piano originals. It’s amazing how much color and orchestral vastness Lewis gets out of his righthand, considering that he doesn’t use the pedals much, tirelessly walking the bass with his left, constantly working the drawbars for subtle shifts in tone and timbre. Monk on the piano can be creepy – Monk on Lewis’ B3 is terrifying.

Yet for all the pyrotechnics, the best song of the night might have been Lewis’ own, slow, simmering, somber, subtly latin-tinged original, dedicated to his nephew. Then he picked up the pace with a handful of tunes from his latest album, American Standards a collection of reharmonized Broadway and cabaret tunes that Monk liked to play Guitarist Ron Jackson was every bit as ferocious as Lewis was, capping off several solos with machete volleys of tremolo-picked chords and taking the intensity up even further with his circing, lightning arpeggios and clustering riffs. And who would have expected icy ghoulabilly chicken-scratch, or wide swaths of octaves that were closer to Indian raga riffs than Wes Montgomery? Behind them, their drummer used his hardware for playful accents when he wasn’t swinging the funk with an agile understatement.

The concert series’ organizer, alto saxophonist Dave Pietro added some high-voltage, Coltrane-ish flurries and stormy torrents on a couple of tune as well. It was a change from the lyrical. Ravel-influenced tunefulness he’d played at the festival’s opening concert the previous week, leading a great band with Gary Versace on piano, Alex Sipiagin on trumpet, Johannes Weidenmueller on bass and Rudy Royston on drums.

Lewis continues to maintain a punishing gig schedule all over town; he and another first-rate guitarist, Marvin Sewell are at Bar Lunatico for brunch on July 21 at 1 PM. This year’s summer series of admission-free jazz concerts at the Provincetown Playhouse on Washington Square West continues on July 22 at 7 PM with Rolling Stones sax player Tim Ries and his band.

Extrovert Organist Brian Charette Keeps Pushing the Envelope

Organist Brian Charette is this era’s Larry Young, expanding the terrain an organist can cover. And he’s one of the funniest guys in jazz: onstage, his sardonic wit infuses the music as much as the between-song banter. After years of toiling as the main organ jazz attraction at Smalls, and touring relentlessly, he’s finally been getting the critical recognition he deserves. His  next gig is with his Sextette at Dizzy’s Club on Feb 13, with sets at 7:30 and 9:30 PM; cover is $30. With six guys in the band, this is a prime opportunity to catch Charette at his devious best.

The last time this blog was in the house at one of Charette’s shows, it was last fall and he was playing an intimate trio set with his mesmerising singer wife Melanie Scholtz at Rue B in the East Village. In terms of unselfconsciously spectacular talent, it wouldn’t be overhype to call these two the newest power couple in jazz. While this gig was completely different from what Charette does in a straight-ahead jazz context, he was still just as much of a shark on the prowl, chilling out between the rocks, waiting for a choice morsel of melody to sink his teeth into.

Scholtz sings in several languages including Xosa, a distinctive and particularly difficult vernacular from her native South Africa that includes clicks along with vowels and consonants. Playing percussion and syndrums, she looped her vocals on several numbers, constructing wildly spiraling, kaleidescopic melodies on a couple of them as Charette shifted from Afrobeat to dub to gospel to vintage soul to a little funk, sometimes all of that in the same serpentine number.

Much as Charette’s erudite textures and idiomatic shifts were entertaining, Scholtz was a force of nature, rising from shamanic, unearthly lows to soaring highs, coyly fluttering intimacy and a gale-force wail. Spun through the mixer, those tones took on all sorts of unexpected, surreal shapes. Yet as psychedelically enveloping as all that turned out to be, it was when she went straight through the PA without any effects that she delivered her most spine-tingling moments of the night. She and Charette are off on European tour next month.

A Characteristically Dark, Cinematic New Album and a Smalls Gig from Phillip Johnston

Best known as a co-founder of the irrepressibly cinematic Microscopic Septet, saxophonist Phillip Johnston has also unsurprisingly done a lot of film work in addition to a bunch of smaller-group projects over the years. He’s playing with the celluloid-oriented Silent Six tonight, Nov 27 at 7:30 PM at Smalls, although his latest project is with a smaller group, the darkly picturesque organ quartet the Coolerators.

Their new album, Diggin’ Bones, is streaming at Bandcamp. As the bandname indicates, the Thelonious Monk influence that informs so much of what Johnston has done throughout his career is front and center here. The tunes are a mix of older material rearranged for organ quartet plus some deliciously menacing new material which gives new meaning to the term “gutbucket organ music.”

The opening track, Frankly, sets the stage, a carnivalesque strut juxtaposing Alister Spence’s smoky, menacing organ against Johnston’s more lighthearted riffage, bassist Lloyd Swanton and drummer Nic Cecire light on their feet. Further back in the mirror but just as present is a certain cover of Pictures at an Exhibition.

What Is Real?, a catchy number that dates back to the 80s, expands out of a syncopated Lou Donaldson-tinged soul-jazz tune, the bandleader sailing uneasily overhead. The title track blends elements of Monk, klezmer and latin noir, Spence raising the suspense with his blend of marionettish staccato and funereal swirl that loosens and lightens, Johnston’s biting modalisms bringing it full circle.

Temporary Blindness is a more latin-flavored take on the album’s opening track: the macabre duet between Spence’s stabbing organ and Swanton’s bowed riffage is one of the album’s high points. Later, which dates from Johnston’s days as a busker in San Francisco in the 70s, is an altered waltz with a surreal, enveloping blend of Monk, the Middle East and psychedelic rock. It’s the album’s most epic and strongest track out of many.

The lone cover is The Revenant, by 70s folk noir icon Michael Hurley, reinvented as a wistful, sparsely arranged shuffle groove with an aptly ghostly, tiptoeing Swanton solo. Legs Yet is the group at their slinkiest and most modally improvisational – and the most traditional, funky organ jazz tune here. Trial By Error – which Johnston had originally recorded with accordion wizard Guy Klucevsek – has a brisk, brightly pulsing klezmer influence fueled by Johnston’s acerbic yet balmy soprano sax attack.

Regrets #17, another number that dates from the 80s, works tight variations on a bluesy chromatic swing theme: here and throughout the album, Spence’s smoky ripples bring to mind the great expat New York organist Jordan Shapiro. The final cut, Ducket Got a Whole In It brings the album full circle with a creepy circus flair. This is arguably the best band Johnston has worked with outside of the Micros, and this album is one of the best and most tuneful of 2018.