Bassdrumbone

I hesitated over downloading this album.  What pushed me over the edge was the shear beauty of the trio's name.  Bassdrumbone.  That's jazz methodology applied to word play!  Another thing that led me to this album was an interest in Gerry Hemingway. 

Drummers and bass players have a position in a combo that is analogous to that of a catcher in baseball.  Either can sit (or stand) at the point from which the entire field is visible.  Paul Motian ranks as perhaps the most influential percussionist in modern jazz precisely because he played that position so well.  Maybe Hemingway is another such drummer. 

Anyway, The Other Parade (2011) is a splendid trio album, richly inventive and gorgeously recorded.  Here is the trio:

• Double Bass – Mark Helias
• Drums – Gerry Hemingway
• Trombone – Ray Anderson

The consonance achieved by the three is hardly surprising, since they have been recording together since 1977.  I am guessing that one can hear a lot more in this recording than was possible back then.  Every guttural thump of the bass, every snort of the trombone and scrape of the drums is audible and tangible.  I wonder how much if at all it affects their playing to know that so much is going onto the signal.   

Here is one to spend a few eMusic dollars on.  I am playing 'Show Truck' and 'The Blue Light Down the Line'. 

The Gerry Hemingway Quartet

From time to time as I explore the Penguin Guide to Jazz (may it be praised) I find an artist who reminds me of what all this jazz is about.  Tonight it was the Gerry Hemingway Quartet.  Hemingway is a drummer largely devoted to avant garde.  He has played with Anthony Braxton and appears, I believe, on one of the Reggie Workman albums that I frequently feature. 

I am playing 'Back Again Some Time' from Devil's Paradise.  This album blends the avant garde sensibility to solid, bluesy melodies in a way that will move you way past the red line.  Here is the lineup:

• Double Bass – Mark Dresser
• Drums – Gerry Hemingway
• Saxophone – Ellery Eskelin
• Trombone – Ray Anderson

You might think that Mark Dresser is a warning sign.  Don't worry.  This is no space music experience.  It is a digging down to the mother lode of jazz flavor.

I am also playing 'Waitin', from The Whimbler.  

• Acoustic Bass, Electric Bass – Mark Helias
• Drums, Producer [Recording], Composed By – Gerry Hemingway
• Tenor Saxophone – Ellery Eskelin
• Trumpet – Herb Robertson

 The horn work on both albums is glowing.  I especially liked Anderson's trombone.