Review first published on Blogcritics
In his new album for Smoke Sessions, Return of the Jazz Communicators, drummer Louis Hayes leads an
updated version of the Jazz Communicators, the ensemble he co-founded in 1967
with trumpeter Freddy Hubbard and saxophonist Joe Henderson. Where the original
band was fronted by trumpet and sax, the new configuration features the sax of
Abraham Burton and the vibraphone of Steve Nelson. In an interview in the
album’s liner notes, Hayes gives a kind of been there, done that explanation
for the change: “I’ve had groups with trumpet and saxophone out front a lot of
different times. . . . I didn’t want the same thing like that.” Driven by some
spirited energetic drum work from Hayes, and complemented by the piano of David
Bryant and the bass of Dezron Douglas, it’s a new sound, a good sound.
Recorded live at Smoke, like most of the albums in the Smoke
Sessions series, the set features a dozen tunes combining standards and
original pieces, in what has become the typical bill of fare for current jazz
albums. If communication is what Hayes and his ensemble are aiming for, this is
an album that hits the mark. They take a tune like Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life,”
and Nelson’s elegant vibe exposition combined with Hayes’ brushwork has the
song speaking like the true classic it is. It is a tour de force, a revelation.
Burton does the same both for “Groovin’ for Nat,” a song Hayes says he used to listen
to Dizzy Gillespie’s big band play at Birdland, as well as his own composition,
“It’s to You.”
The set opens with a soulful attack on “Soul-Leo” followed
by Nelson’s up tempo bop “Shape Shifting” which gives everyone a chance to show
what they can do. And they can do a lot. Bravura versions of “Without a Song”
and “Portrait of Jennie” fill out the roster of standards. Hayes’ “Lou’s Idea”
has a clever witty melody that generates some clever wit from the piano and
bass. The set closes with a hard driving bop “Village Greene.”
Return of the Jazz
Communicators is another very fine album in the Smoke Session series, the
kind of album that will have jazz fan’s mouths watering for more.
