The Eric Ineke JazzXpress, Swing Street (Timeless)
Heavy Hitters, That’s What’s Up! (Cellar)
Art Tatum, Jewels In The Treasure Box (Resonance)
Emmet Cohen, Vibe Provider (Mack Avenue)
The Dam Jawn, Forward! (Cellar)
Kurt Rosenwinkel, The Next Step Band (Heartcore)
Teis Semey, En Masse! (Loumi)
Check out the harvest of 2024 below, plenty swing if you look in the right places.
Rarely if ever does one hear neo-hard bop performed as energetically as on drummer Ulysses Owens’ Jr. first live album on the indispensable Cellar label. Glorious archival release of Emily Remler, live and cooking, testament to her greatness as heir to the classic guitarists. Gospel tinges from the undisputed king of vintage organ jazz. Sparkling Cannonball tribute by Dutch drum legend Eric Ineke and his sharpshooters.
(Very) Heavy Hitters keep the flame of Eastern Rebellion-ish hard bop burning brightly. A treasure trove of Tatum gems, live in 1953. Versatile Cohen pays beautiful homage to NYC jazz sage.
Young lions plus Dick Oats turn in top-notch sophomore effort. Game-changing band from the Philly-bred string bender in full flight. Danish guitarist briskly hurls himself in the mouth of grunge jazz.
BUD SHANK – After publishing about the life and career of Bud Shank recently, I got into touch with jazz aficionados and collectors Randy L. Smith from Japan and Jan-Erik Karlsson from Sweden, knowing that both have photographs of many jazz legends, including Bud Shank.
Port Townsend is a beautiful seaside town approximately sixty miles north from Seattle in Washington State in the Puget Sound region. Shank moved to Port Townsend in the 1980’s and became director of the local jazz festival. Smith: “Shank was induced by pianist and mover and shaker Barney McClure to move to Port Townsend. McClure was also the mayor of Port Townsend. Shank built the festival into a world-class affair with his many connections.” Pictured above: Conte Candoli, Bud Shank, Bill Perkins, John Clayton, Jack Nimitz. Below: Bud Shank and Lee Konitz on the left. Photographs by John W. Bubb, July 1988.
Jan-Erik Karlsson took pictures in the 1980’s at the Skeppsholmen festival in Stockholm. Karlsson visited countless editions of the festival. Here’s Bud Shank on the left with drummer Jeff Hamilton and bassist Ray Brown of the L.A. Four. Beautiful shot, guys having big fun!
Norman Simmons (piano), Victor Sproles (bass), Vernel Fornier (drums)
Recorded
in 1956 in Chicago
Released
as Argo 607 in 1956
Track listing
Side A: Capacity In Blues/Stella By Starlight/Jan/My Funny Valentine/Peppe
Side B: Chili Bowl/Moonlight In Vermont/You Do Something To Me/Love Is Eternal/They Can’t Take That Away From Me/Tranquility
This gets you through the night. Good bounce, sassy Carribean touches and original arrangements. Gift from a man who isn’t a household name. Simmons worked mostly in the background, letting others flower and flourish, whether it was singers as Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae, Helen Humes, Anita O’Day and Joe Williams or hard boppers like fellow Chicagoan Johnny Griffin.
In the early stage of his career, Simmons worked at the Beehive in Chicago as house pianist, backing Prez and Bird, no less. There’s no better education than the bandstand. Truism all too forgotten these days. Simmons honed his chops and perfected the feel of his trio, which most of the time consisted of bassist Victor Sproles and New Orleans-born and bred drummer Vernel Fournier, best-known through his association with pianist Ahmad Jamal.
So when it was time to hit the studio, they were ready for a mixture of standards and originals, perceived in their own refreshing image. One has to hear for itself how attuned to each other’s ears a good piano trio can (should) be and one can do without a weathered track-by-track analysis. Worth to point out, however, are their original takes on Stella By Starlight and My Funny Valentine, both rhythmically inventive and suspenseful. Not to mention the uplifting rhumba vibe of Simmons’s Jan and the nuanced interplay of Chili Bowl, which is usually credited to Duke Ellington.
Simmons is anti-flash, a pianist that cares about the value of balance and thoughtful phrasing, perhaps the result of his various enterprises in accompaniment. He plays like a respected baker kneading dough and carrying on all the right steps to the end product, experienced means to a tasteful end.
Simmons recorded two handfuls of records during his lifetime, which took him two years shy of a half century. (Two of those feature tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander in the 00’s, who’s always been keen on working with unsung heroes) His debut Trio wasn’t followed up until the release of 1976’s Ramira The Dancer. Much better title, quite intriguing, no doubt inspired by a lady whose steps equaled the versatile beat-ness of Simmons.
Norman Simmons passed away at the venerable age of 92 in 2021.
Bud Shank (alto saxophone, flute), Claude Williamson (piano), Don Prell (bass), Chuck Flores (drums)
Recorded
on May 7 & 8, 1956 at Capitol Studio, Los Angeles
Released
as PJ-1230 in 1956
Track listing
Side A: A Night In Tunesia/Tertia/All Of You/Theme
Side B:Jive At Five/Softly As In A Morning Sunrise/Polka Dots And Moonbeams/The Lamp Is Low
West Coast and alto saxophone. First artist that comes to mind is the legendary Art Pepper, a hell of a player that lived a troubled and hectic life that perfectly suited the myth making that’s so conducive to the world of jazz and entertainment. Bud Shank’s life may not have been tailored for highly publicized reports or memoirs. But as far as capabilities and talent is concerned, he was hot on the heels of Pepper. One just needs to take some time to delve into the work of the Dayton, Ohio-born saxophonist to realize that, he too, was a hell of a player, and then some. With delving, I mean that, fun records as they may be, best option may be to put aside Shank’s commercial albums from the 1950’s and 1960’s – titles as Theme Music From “The James Dean Story”, The Swing’s To TV, Michelle, Bud Shank In Africa, California Dreamin’ and Folk ‘n’ Flute – and check out the real stuff. Like Featuring Claude Williamson, which includes not only the fine pianist that is credited on the sleeve but also other West Coast stalwarts, Don Prell on bass and Chuck Flores on drums. We’ll get to that. First, in a ‘noteshell’, Shank’s life and career. Went to California in the late 1940’s and broke through in the famed Stan Kenton band in the early 1950’s. Highly proficient on both alto saxophone and flute. Was one of the first advocates of what came to be known as world music, playing Brazilian-flavored music with Laurindo Almeida in 1953 and India-styled stuff with Ravi Shankar in 1962. Worked in the Hollywood studios and played the alto flute solo on pop hit California Dreamin’ by The Mamas And The Papas in 1965.
Shank recorded prolifically on World Pacific in the 1950’s and 1960’s – the beforementioned mix of commerce and real jazz – but as the 1960’s winded down, seemed to have landed in a rut, tired of working in the entertainment business. Perhaps appropriately, Shank burned down the tail end of the decade with his last recording on Pacific, Let It Be, which included songs as Let It Be, Something, The Long And Winding Road, Both Sides Now, Didn’t We and For Once In My Life, featuring Roger Kellaway, Dennis Budimir, Carol Kaye and John Guerin, almost all men and ladies who made good money in the studios and had to resort to play jazz after hours.
The L.A. Four came to the rescue. His association with Ray Brown led to a highly successful period of recording and touring in the 1970’s and 1980’s (1974-82), no less than 10 albums, featuring, subsequently, Chuck Flores, Shelly Manne and Jeff Hamilton on drums and Laurindo Almeida on guitar. Better days. I wondered how it came about that Shank rose from the ashes of the studio grind. As the former Swiss producer Jean-Michel Reisser-Beethoven, former manager of Ray Brown and friend of many now long gone jazz legends, tells it on the phone with Flophouse, it was rather Phenix-like.
“Bud was one of the first call musicians. This guy could read and play anything and he was fabulous on alto, flute, tenor and baritone. He told me about his average working day. You show up at 8 in the morning, get your charts, you got two minutes to read through it, then it’s time to record. And movies had sequences where nothing was written out, you had to watch and improvise, create on the spot. That’s very difficult. Bud was one of the greatest in that field.”
“The problem was, Bud was a jazz guy. After all those years in the studios, he was tired and depressed. It was so bad that he got suicidal. He wanted to quit. His wife was very upset and anxious. She called Ray Brown. That’s what everybody does. There’s a problem? You call Ray. So, eventually, Bud was on the phone with Ray and he said, ‘I wanna do jazz again, let’s get a group together’. Ray said, ‘Well, jazz is in the toilet, nobody wants to hear jazz anymore, let me think about it…’ He said, ‘I got an idea. I’m doing a lot of gigs with Laurendo Almeida, we do classical, bossa, Cuban, jazz, everybody loves it’.
“So, the L.A. Four started after those phone calls. Suddenly, that was the second life of Bud Shank. Ray wanted him to play a lot of flute. Ray had it all figured out, made up an unusual line up of flute/sax and guitar, bass and drums, no piano. It was easy to book, easy to travel and after a while, with jazz somewhat back on its feet in the 1980’s, Bud was a hot ticket. How did Ray and Bud met each other? Bud told me that he first met Ray in 1949, when Bud was in the Stan Kenton band and Ray came to Los Angeles. He met Ray at a JATP concert. Ray told me that everybody talked about this young guy, this motherfucker was supposed to be good. Everybody loved Bud because he was a very honest and funny guy. He didn’t take drugs and he was always on time.”
Reisser-Beethoven continues, in praise of Shank. “He is acclaimed as a great sax player. He’s one of few guys that, though he learned a lot of his lessons, didn’t play like Charlie Parker. He didn’t sound like Parker and was very original. And he is a very great flute player too. I will tell you a story. On many occasions, the jazz players that played for the movies and did the jingles and stuff, they were shit upon by the classical musicians. Often, when the flute parts were to be recorded, the classical guys couldn’t play them. The studio called in Bud Shank. He was the only guy that could play those parts. The classical guys were horrible, they said, ‘call this jazz guy’. They never mentioned his name. Bud came in, took five minutes to play his part, everybody was happy and could go home. One night when he told me this, he was still hurt by the way the way he was treated, practically in tears. I said, ‘Hey man, you fuck them! They couldn’t play it, you could!’ It isn’t like that anymore, but it was like that back then, the jazz guys had a hard time.”
“I organized tours with Bud from 1992 to 1994 with Dado Moroni, Pierre Boussaguet, Alvin Queen. Everybody loved it. It was great because it was well-deserved. He was one of the greats. Once, Benny Carter told me about his five favorite alto players in jazz. Naturally, he picked Charlie Parker and Johnny Hodges as the two greats. The remainder included Cannonball Adderley, Phil Woods, Bud Shank… That tells you something about his stature.”
Shank was back on track. He started to record again as a leader on Concord. And a prolific late career saw him recording on various labels including Contemporary and Fresh Sound. By then, Shank had long since stopped playing flute and focused on alto saxophone. Dutch drummer Eric Ineke, who played with Dexter Gordon, Dizzy Gillespie, Jimmy Raney, Chet Baker, George Coleman and countless others, also played with Bud Shank from the 1990’s onwards. He praises Shank in his book The Ultimate Sideman, noticing a change of tone.
“Bud was special to me, I liked his no nonsense straightforward attitude. (..) The first time I played with Bud was in 1989, together with Bill Perkins on tenor, also from the West Coast. They were not playing West Coast Jazz, they were burning. After the first tour we did many more with the trio of Rein de Graaff. He became more and more a hardcore blower and I think he really wanted to get rid of the West Coast stigma the critics gave him in the fifties.”
“His sound changed because he was getting older, the sound was deeper, he burned harder, swinged harder, he took a lot of chances. When you hear his old records, it’s cleaner and calmer, now he’s got more of everything and he just wanted to blow.”
Wisdom comes with age. Guys like Pepper and Shank were like old rocks in the hills of Big Sur. They erode more and more each year, but each new spring season as new flowers come up, the purple and yellow and red bed of blossom seems more beautiful than the preceding year. They played some of their best stuff late in life. Earlier on? Cleaner and calmer, as Ineke states in the case of Shank. But swinging. That’s Bud Shank circa 1956, a clean-cut fellow, almost, but not quite, the boy-next-door. Rising in the ranks in Hollywood, but ready and armed for the real jazz deal.
Highlights? The Lamp Is Low is top-notch, introduced by flute, segueing into fluent swing with alto, and Claude Williamson high on the heels of Shank. These guys gelled very well, like strawberries and whipped cream. Shank’s flute work in the smoothly swinging take on Night In Tunesia is rather stunning. Polka Dots And Moonbeams is turned into a stately fugue. Best of all is Williamson’s unusual Tertia, also classical-tinged, in the introduction, and developing into a kind of bop suite. Walking bass. Flute melody lines. Blues changes. Sassy riffs. Drum break. Then the supple alto madness of Shank and the route on the keys from Powell to Hines by Williamson.
Cliché but the veritable truth. Ms. Pitts is nothing short of exciting, especially in a live setting.
Personnel
Trudy Pitts (organ), Wilbert Longmire (guitar), Bill Carney (drums)
Recorded
on May 24, 1968 at Club Baron, New York City
Released
as PRST-7583 in 1968
Track listing
Side A:
Trudy ‘N’ Blue
Never My Love
Side B:
Autumn Leaves
W.T. Blues
Husbands and wives. There’s Shirley Scott and Mr. T, but let’s not forget Trudy Pitts and Mr. C. Wife and husband. Only difference is, Stanley Turrentine was a tenor saxophonist, whereas Bill Carney was a drummer. Equally soulful, Carney had previously worked with Shirley Scott and encouraged Trudy to pursue a career on the Hammond organ. Mr. C subsequently assisted her on four Prestige records. Pitts, formerly a pianist and music educator that had studied at Juillard, also cooperated with Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt. Why there hasn’t in the wordplay world of jazz been a record by the name of Stitt’s Pitts is beyond me. Missed opportunity.
At any rate, Pitts furthermore recorded with Pat Martino (El Hombre) and Willis Jackson (Star Bag) and came to be part of the increasingly quirky career of Roland Kirk in the ‘70s, appearing on, among others, Other Folks’ Music, as dryly comical a title as they come.
The title of The Excitement Of Trudy Pitts is a dime a dozen. A matter of insignificance, because it’s the subtitle that counts: Recorded Live At Club Baron. Among the Prestige records of Trudy Pitts, who hailed from the stronghold of organ jazz Philadelphia and was acclaimed for her blues-drenched style, dynamic settings of the organ and foot pedal work and mentored ‘another Scott’, namely the young Rhoda Scott, The Excitement Of Trudy Pitts stands out. Whereas her other records focused on diverse and concise standards and popular tunes, her fourth and final album on Prestige is a full-blown affair of groove and grease.
What’s so alluring about records like The Excitement Of Trudy Pitts is that they give you a feeling of how things went at the tail end of the chitlin’ circuit era, during which clubs offered accessible, soulful musical entertainment to the predominantly black community, which was lining up in clubs in cities like Newark, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Syracuse, Chicago, Atlantic City. Hammond organ combos were very popular. Foot pedal style or bass lines on the keyboard obviated the need for a bass player, which was cheaper for club owners. Most of all, crowds were taken in by the multi-dimensional sounds of the organ, which sounded familiarly like church and related to the vocalizing of blues singers.
This time the place is Club Baron in New York City and the aural snapshot is provided by Ms. Pitts, who rocks the joint with the help of guitarist Wilbert Longmire and her other half, Bill Carney. Four tunes, two on each side. Pitts rips and roars through the up-tempo 12-bar blues progression of Trudy ‘N’ Blue. The feeling that she coaxes out of the organ during Never My Love equals the bittersweet yearning of the soul singer and is underlined by a subtle, perky beat.
The other beats that Carney provides are jubilant, groovy, raucous and bring Club Baron to boiling point in combination with Wilbert Longmire’s dirty but nimble-fingered playing style. Autumn Leaves gets a hard-cookin’ treatment and W.T. Blues is the kind of backbeat-heavy blues that induces a couple of slightly inebriated gents and dames to start to point their fingers at what lingers in the middle of their bodies.
Miss Pitts was exciting, remember? To be sure, she is not a cheap sensationalist but gets the message across with plenty of ideas and plenty of skills. Plenty is the word here. As T-Bone Walker once sang, “let your hair down baby, let’s have a natural ball.” Baron had a ball. Wouldn’t you? After five decades, this stuff is definitely still fresh enough to arouse your spirits.
The Adderley Brothers get down to the nitty gritty in the cradle of jazz with Ellis Marsalis and friends.
Personnel
Nat Adderley (cornet), Nat Perrilliat (tenor saxophone), Cannonball Adderley (alto saxophone), Ellis Marsalis (piano), Sam Jones (bass), James Black (drums)
Recorded
on May 19, 1962 in New Orleans
Released
as Jazzland 75 in 1962
Track listing
Side A:
In The Bag
Sister Wilson
R.S.V.P
Low Brown
Side B:
Mozart-in
New Arrival
Chatterbox
Finding themselves in New Orleans in early 1962, Nat and Cannonball Adderley noticed that there were quite a few excellent, blues and swing-drenched jazz players. Leave it to Cannonball to act upon his intuition, just like he did when he called Riverside label boss Orrin Keepnews in 1959 when the quintet was firing on all cylinders at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco, which led to smash hit and perennial favorite Live In San Francisco. From New Orleans, Cannonball called in on Keepnews again and requested that they record with a couple of good but relatively unknown NO musicians. And so Nat Adderley’s In The Bag came to pass. That was the advantage of being part of the independent music business.
The cats that the Adderleys met were tenor saxophonist Nat Perrilliat, drummer James Black and pianist Ellis Marsalis, supposedly the first time that the beloved educator and head of the Marsalis dynasty was recorded on wax. Many recordings would follow, if only decades later, after two of his six sons, Wynton and Branford, broke through in the early 1980’s. Marsalis sadly passed away from Covid-19-related pneumonia in 2020.
It was a good idea to represent modern jazz from New Orleans, since it was rather underrepresented in The Big Easy, town of traditional jazz and rhythm and blues. In The Bag was certainly not the ‘first modern jazz session in New Orleans’, as Keepnews claims in the liner notes, though it is evident that practically all modernists worked in rhythm and blues and traditional settings to earn a living and were into their own thing exclusively at after-hours spots, notably artists like clarinettist Alvin Batiste and Ed Blackwell, the unique drummer who would join the groundbreaking free jazz group of one-time New Orleans-resident Ornette Coleman in Los Angeles in the late 1950’s.
Contrary to Keepnews’s statement, there had been modern jazz recordings in New Orleans, even if they were very few, among those Golf Coast Jazz Volume 1, recorded by the American Jazz Quintet featuring Marsalis, Blackwell, Batiste, saxophonist Harold Batiste and bassist Richard Payne in 1959. Modernists as saxophonist Mouse Bonati and pianists Ed Frank and Frank Strazzeri were represented on various New Sounds From New Orleans albums, though they, to be sure, were not New Orleans-born. But to the credit of Keepnews, these recordings were very obscure and only reissued decades later. His remark raises the question how many modern jazz recordings there approximately have been in New Orleans in the bop and hard bop period of the 1950s-60’s and which releases and artists are we actually talking about?
In The Bag, on the strength of the high-profile presence of the Adderley Brothers, has been reissued over the years. It’s a fine, blues-drenched session. Nat Adderley’s catchy line In The Bag ends with a coda full of naughty odd notes. It becomes immediately clear that the hard tone and sassy playing of Nat Perrilliat is a great asset. James Black’s Sister Wilson is a first-class hard bop burner. Adderley’s ballad playing on cornet on Marsalis’s R.S.V.P. has the right touch of control and emotion. Marsalis, a saucy accompanist throughout, takes vivid center stage during Yusef Salim’s mid-tempo Low Down, spurred on by Black’s gritty accents.
Mozart-in refers to its composer Alvin Batiste, who was nicknamed “Mozart” because of his prolific composing career. It features another jubilant solo by Nat Adderley, who isn’t afraid to engage in buoyant high whoops, appropriately Satchmo-like as vivaciousness is concerned. The band also took Chatterbox from the Alvin Batiste book, familiar terrain for the New Orleans clan, having been recorded earlier on the beforementioned Golf Coast session by the American Jazz Quintet.
The Adderleys made every effort necessary to limelight unsung cats. Cool guys with a big heart.
Portuguese guitarist Ricardo Pinheiro is all about melody and tone and meanwhile making up musical stories with a who’s who from Europe, USA and Brazil. “I’m working with my idols, so I’m very happy.”
Pinheiro shows the view from his house with his camera. A big garden, rows of trees of multiple heights at the edge. A crystal-clear blue sky. It’s Sintra, a short drive from Lisbon. The gorgeous Sintra Woods and Mountains were a retreat for Portuguese nobility, full of opulent castles and villas. The forests are dense like giant wombs, the hills are jagged like gigantic rock elbows and various locations offer a breathtaking view of the ocean nearby. To say the least, living in Sintra is not a punishment. “It’s beautiful. I grew up in Lisbon, but I came to Sintra when I was 17. My parents built a house. I lived here for three years before I went to study at Berklee in Boston. When I got married, me and my wife were wondering where to live. Prices in Lisbon were high. Not as crazy high as nowadays, but higher than Sintra. We got an apartment and then, after the birth of our second child, moved into this house.”
The beauty and splendid serenity of Sintra inspired Caruma, Pinheiro’s refined and moving piece of guitar and voices featuring singers Theo Bleckmann and Monica Salmasso from 2020. Clearly, Pinheiro can’t be confined to a small space. He got plenty heads turning as a sidekick to Dave Liebman and never looked back, releasing various, singular albums of standards, straight-ahead and prog jazz, acoustic and Brazilian-Portuguese flavored songs, free improv, jazz and poetry and cinematic scores. A kid in the candy store of guitar music. “There wasn’t an instrument in the house until I asked for a guitar at age 14. I was soon playing heavy metal. Metallica and Iron Maiden. I was in a band that even recorded in the UK. But when I was about 17, I felt the need to study theory. That meant playing jazz at the Hot Club Jazz. My grandfather listened to Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Broadway tunes, Brazilian music. It was old people’s music to me then. It was okay, but old! Still, I started to get into standards, learning harmony. Then I got into John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Joe Henderson. Charlie Parker. Slowly but surely I started understanding it and loving it.”
You could do worse than, a couple decades later, assembling a line-up of saxophonist Chris Cheek, bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Jorge Rossy. They are part of Pinheiro’s newest Fresh Sound Records release, Tone Stories. A set of standards that includes well-known warhorses as When You Wish Upon A Star and Blame It On My Youth and seldom-played hard bop classics as Elmo Hope’s De-Dah and Dexter Gordon’s Fried Bananas, marked by the angular yet lyrical playing of Pinheiro, embedded in the colorful sounds of the all-star cast. It’s a warm and smoothly flowing album, apple pie fresh out of the oven. And nothing tastes quite as good as his version of Jimmy Rowles’s seminal ballad The Peacocks, achingly beautiful from start to finish. “Tone is the quality of sound. I like to think of the album as a set of stories that are told with the tones of each player, which together make the sound of the band. And we’re telling a story with each song. Chris and Michael have incredible tones. Jorge as well. He had definite ideas of how he wanted his drums to sound, especially during the ballads. He said to the engineers, ‘I’m not playing like a typical drummer, behind everything, chink chink… Please put me up forward in the mix. I’m painting sounds.’ Jorge is one of my favorite drummers of all-time, period. So, this album is a dream come true.”
From heavy metal, the tradition of Wes Montgomery to the invigorating input of the school of the 90’s. Pinheiro enthusiastically reflects on the influence of his postmodernist elders. “I belong to the first generation that was inspired by people like Jorge Rossy, Brad Meldhau, Mark Turner, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Chris Cheek. They incorporated a lot of tradition but with a new flavor, used the same tools in a different way. It’s not Wes but also isn’t fusion. When Meldhau did those pop songs, it really connected with me. Jazz can be like this, wow. It wasn’t playing pop as pop, but pop like jazz. Brad, Jorge and Chris redefined things, formed new musical proposals. Nobody played even eights like Jorge. Nobody had the timbre of Kurt or the two-handed independence and the classical vibe of Brad. Or played the upper part of the horn like Mark. Their groups joined two worlds, tradition and fusion, together in a peaceful way. They deserve all the credit.”
He sometimes starts solos where you least expect it. Paves the way to a resolution with quirkily melodious twists and turns. Pinheiro’s style is a refreshing mixture of asymmetry and lyricism. He doesn’t restrict himself to the vintage 1950’s aesthetic. On the contrary. He allows himself the odd display of effects and volume and tone control, with extraordinary results. During The Peacocks, his handling of volume control mingles like a human voice with Cheek’s suave soprano. Back in 2017, he made When You Wish Upon A Star into a psychedelic tour de force, almost as if he was playing in The Grateful Dead or Iron Butterfly or Pink Floyd or was playing along with the thirteenth take of The Beatles’s Tomorrow Never Knows, with Massimo Cavalli and Eric Ineke on Triplicity. The same trio repeated the uncanny feat on their 2022 version of Bill Evans’s Time Remembered. And effects and tone control are all over Caruma or 2013’s Tone Of A Pitch. Pinheiro stresses an important fact: “Melody is all-important. I’m not thinking about hip runs or large intervals. If music has no melody, there’s no point in my opinion. But I like different things. I’m like a chameleon. Tone aesthetic comes with the history of jazz, in a way. The classic guitarists were thinking about their tone. Way back, I started listening to John Scofield and Bill Frisell and started experimenting with delay, overdrive and reverb to color the music. But I avoid exaggerating at all costs, I don’t want to obscure the message and the melody. I envision sounds and try to go for it, either with thinking about strings, how to use my hands or with effects. The incredible Ben Monder has been very important to me. He taught me how to use effects and tone control without confusing things up. It took a few years of experimenting.”
Pinheiro hooked up with various class acts through the years. He met Dave Liebman and Dutch drummer Eric Ineke through the International Association of Schools of Jazz, which was founded by Liebman. His albums were released on Greg Osby’s Inner Circle label and Jordi Pujol’s acclaimed Fresh Sound Records, among others. A well-connected gent. “Fresh Sound was one of my favorite labels. I fell in love with those records from Meldhau and Rosenwinkel. I kept in touch with Jordi ever since the release of my debut album Open Letter in 2010. It’s kind of my nature to take matters in my own hands. I’m a little… how shall I say this, not ashamed.” Pinheiro laughs. “I harass people! That’s how I got in touch with Chris Cheek. Back then, I knew Chris was coming to play here. He had done four albums on Fresh Sound and I thought they were absolutely fantastic. I sent him an email and asked if he wanted to record and he agreed. I asked if he could talk with Jordi. He happily obliged and that is how my first album Open Letter came about. Now we’ve got Tone Stories and another one in the can already with the same quartet.”
Neatly trimmed coupe, healthy tan, bright eyes, rapid, enthusiastic flow of speech. One easily understands why colleagues, apart from his original musicianship of course, like to work with the resident of Sintra and jazz teacher. He’s eager to continue his striking partnership with Massimo Cavalli and Eric Ineke. “We’ve got another album coming up, we’ve finished recording just last month. Massimo and I have a great understanding. And I love to play with Eric. He’s one of the most swinging drummers out there, so easy to play with. Energetic, yet sensitive. There’s no effort, strain, doubt, he always is totally aware of the structure of the music. He carries with him this big history of playing with loads of giants of jazz.”
Among other endeavors, notably working with Grammy-winning Brazilian singer Luciana Souza and having the exceptional improvisational skills of Portuguese Maria João on a soon-to-released solo album, Pinheiro is currently striking up a cooperation with none other than famous Brazilian composer and singer Ivan Lins. “I contacted him and sent some songs. He said that they were beautiful and suggested that he write lyrics. I couldn’t believe it. I’m over the moon.”
Ricardo Pinheiro
Check out Ricardo and his discography here.
And find Tone Stories on Fresh Sound here.
