Hardbop Muscle from Jim Snidero & Eric Alexander
Submitted by Jazz Note SDP
I am having fun playing with audacity. I am having more fun listening to Jim Snidero’s magnificent recording, Close Up. This is straightforward hard bop with all the impurities cooked out of the ore. Eric Alexander joins Snidero on a couple of cuts, a fact that promises a lot and delivers more. But the rhythm section is just as brilliant. David Hazeltine plays piano, Paul Gill bass, and Billy Drummond, guess what, is on drums. If these guys had played like this back in, say, 57, they would have their own stars on the broadway sidewalk.
The best cut on the album, I am thinking right now, is a Snidero composition ‘Nippon Blue.’ Stanly Crouch has said that all good jazz is blues based (I think Wynton Marsalis agrees). Look up jazz based blues in an online dictionary, and you ought to find an audio link to this number. There’s power here, and these guys know what to do with it.
Here is the intro to get you started:
Okay now, here’s the thing: that intro is followed by two solos. Seasoned jazz fan that I pretend to be, I ought to be able to tell Snidero’s alto from Alexander’s tenor. But I can’t. I’m a fraud I’m afraid. I did see a note that says they are both playing on this number. Maybe you can tell me. anway, here is the first solo:
Here is the second solo:
All I can tell for sure is that they are both toe-curling good. Jim Snidero ought to be a lot more famous than he is. Look this one up. It’s available at eMusic, and I am sure, elsewhere.
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