Penguin Guide To Jazz on
CD
8th and 9th editions (2006 and 2008)
(4 star rating system)
After Hours - (3 stars)
Duets With Bill Stewart - (3 stars)
Swing Sing Songs - (3 1/2 stars)
Ghost Ships - (3 1/2 stars)
Armistice 1918 - (3 stars)
Shine Ball - (3 1/2 stars)
I Love Paris - (3 stars)
Keep Your Sunny Side Up - (3 stars)
Carrothers is a class act, already endowed with a formidable breadth of
experience, and able to fit in with most contemporary jazz situations. That's
often a problem when it comes to helming your own dates, but these records
aren't short on confidence or ideas. While the session in Go Jazz's After Hours
series is a bit one-paced - a dozen ballads all negotiated at a slow walk -
Carrothers lays bare the material and breaks it into pristine pieces. One to
sample a few tracks at a time. It's rather better recorded than some of the
entries in this series.
Duets With Bill Stewart
The Duets With Bill Stewart record reduces the cast to two, although since
Stewart and Carrothers have worked together many times there's no sense of
anything missing. The material's a good deal more diverse in both source and
treatment; not many modern pianists would think of playing Puttin' on the Ritz,
here played with left hand boogie figures which pop in and out of the
improvising, or The Whiffenpoof Song. Oddest piece might be I Apologize, in
which Stewart rattles out a tempoless tattoo before Carrothers enters to play
the tune almost straight. A lot of the music sounds like a private dialogue, and
it's hard to get inside.
Swing Sing Songs
Swing Sing Songs is an extraordinary programme. Carrothers seeks out new
material which even the likes of Mehldau haven't thought about - Call Me
Irresponsible? Gordon Jenkins' Blue Evening? Keith Jarrett is a spectre at this
feast, in part because the pianist has picked up the older player's annoying
singalong habit here and there, but it's Jarrett's acute melodic focus and
concentration on the line which Carrothers follows, rather than any devotion to
the shrine of Keith. When he does Donna Lee, it's tremulously slow, whereas
Barry Harris' Reets and I is fast bebop done teasingly straight. The music works
a truce between rough-and-ready (Steve Wiese gives them an attractive live sound
in the studio) and absolute finesse, and it feels like a real trio at work.
More, please.
Ghost Ships
Ghost Ships is another remarkable trio and record, with Carrothers helming
material that seems to speak of mysterious past times, the sea, and those who
sail on her. There are three tracks here titled Ghost Ship, and there's also God
Bless America and The Navy Hymn. Carrothers unearths another tune that everyone
but him has forgotten in Your Hit Parade, and their version of Wayne Shorter's
Water Babies, all cool lines and spartan dialogue, is another peg in a concept
that feels palpable yet entirely elusive. Denner gets into the spirit on his
three horns, baleful at times, wistful at others.
Armistice 1918
One can't fault Carrothers for ambition or originality. Here he creates a
panorama of music from the First World War, everything from music hall songs
such as I'm Afraid To Come Home In the Dark to made-to-measure patriotism of the
order of America I Love You and The Rose Of No-Man's Land. Bill's wife Peg
handles principal vocal duties, while his ensemble, with the unusual choice of
cello and contra bass clarinet, play the music respectfully, imbued perhaps with
Carrothers' own passion for history. Improvisatory material fills in the
remaining spaces. Initially we were in no-man's land as far as final judgment is
concerned, but it improves with knowing.
Shine Ball
Recorded at two sessions exactly one year apart, this is a complete contrast to
the above, 14 improvisations, pure and unadorned. Carrothers' sense of form
restricts the threesome from going into the remotest kind of free playing, and
several of the pieces sound as if ready-made themes have emerged and blossomed
even within the space of three or four minutes. But this is some of the hardest
kind of freedom to achieve. King, a thrilling drummer in any situation, embraces
the ideas with both hands and delivers some of his wittiest and most
accomplished playing, as does Johnson. Delightful and often funny.
I Love Paris
Keep Your Sunny Side Up
Though they appeared as a pair, these were actually recorded some way apart and,
as is equally obvious above, with different groups. Not so obvious when you
listen to the records. Carrothers has an exceptionally strong presence, and
while there's a certain democracy in these line-ups, it's him you listen to.
Take I Love Paris itself, a slowed-down, almost brooding thing that seems
to derive a certain bitter melancholy from the preceding Stars Fell On
Alabama. So commanding is the mood that one might almost grudge Thys his
brief solo. At moments, Carrothers might be mistaken for Paul Bley, except those
brown-edged chords sound like no one but himself and the little harmonic
slippages are nicely individual.
You notice the latter most when he plays Monk, a cheeky "Evidence" on the later
record, wedged between the originals Salty Peanuts and Church of the
Open Air. The time feel is very relaxed, but springy and capable of rapid
transition into more abrasive tempos. The choice of material is intriguing.
Though there's a nod to more recent pop in Joni Mitchell's Roses Blue,
Carrothers clearly loves the old songs. His approach to Keep Your Sunny Side
Up is playfully abstract, sounding the tune but plucking at its edges until
it falls apart in a lovely shimmer; the reprise is even better. Brother Can
You Spare a Dime on the other record has real poignancy and a sting of
anger. I Love Paris is perhaps the more satisfyingly coherent of the two.
Also maybe the more autumnal. Both are lovely, though.