As Nigel Price’s helpfully informative sleeve notes say, each track on this album is some kind of tribute to a past and/or current jazz master.
Aside from the quality of the playing, however, what makes this CD notable is the fact that five of the nine tracks are Price originals. It’s good to report that they stand up well alongside the more familiar standards.
Price’s ‘Hey, Shirley’ is 3/4 blues in tribute to organist and Blue Note Records stalwart, Shirley Scott. ‘Night Flight’ is an up-tempo finger-busting swinger, based on Herbie Hancock’s ‘Maiden Voyage’ and ‘Kid Gloves’ is a bustling straight-ahead piece inspired by Pat Martino.
Of the standards, ‘You Don’t Know Me’ is a funky tribute to Joey DeFrancesco with a wonderful Ross Stanley organ chorale to close. Fran Landesman and Tommy Wolf’s ‘Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most’ is taken at an appropriately elegant pace. Towards the end Stanley plays a beautiful organ solo using a high B3 organ tone that sounds almost like a synthesiser before switching back into a Leslie speaker-enhanced gospel chorus.
This is a splendidly tight-knit trio. Stanley’s bass footwork is admirably nimble. Joel Barford is consistently excellent and has been well mixed so that where he’s busy, he’s never intrusive. As for Nigel Price, if you like straight, swinging, clean-toned guitar in the style of Wes Montgomery, Barney Kessel or Kenny Burrell, then he is not one to disappoint. It’s playing of this standard that keeps the jazz tradition burning and is likely to turn more people onto the music.
