Jazz on the Beach 175 & Blues Beach 69: Takuya Kuroda, Cédric Hanriot, Martina DaSilva & Alex Goodman, Lophae, Buba Wii Aa, Charles Sullivan
Robert Johnson, Earl Hooker, Albert King, Eddie Hinton and Henry Thomas
This week’s Jazz on the Beach radio playlist features the high speed Car 16 15 A from the Kobe born and Brooklyn based trumpeter Takuya Kuroda’s new album Everyday (PPK Records, 28th February). It’s about the sheer panic of rushing to board the last carriage of a departing Japanese bullet train, and the relief of actually making it. Kuroda also plays synth and Fender Rhodes on this burner that features tenor saxophonist Craig Hill, guitarist Akira Ishiguro, bassist Rashaan Carter drummer David Frazier and percussionist Takafumi Nikaido.
It’s been eleven years since Kuroda’s hugely successful album Rising Sun (Blue Note, 2014), and the hit version of Roy Ayers Ubiquity’s Everybody Loves the Sunshine with José James. There have been highs and lows since, but with the excellent Everyday the first release on a new label run by manager David Passick, bassist Pino Palladino and producer Joel Kipnis, Kuroda’s very much up and running. Here’s the video.
Onward to Paris, and the recently released Comforting Glow by French multi-instrumentalist and producer Cédric Hanriot from his Time Is Color Vol. 2 - A Luminous World (Morphosis Arts, 31st January). It’s one of the more reflective tracks from this thoroughly modern jazz hip-hop soul project that has some impressive guests (including Braxton Cook, Soweto Kinch, Erik Truffaz and various MC’s), and features Hanriot at the piano with bassist Bertrand Beruard and drummer Antonin Violot.
Catching the Eurostar from Gare du Nord to St Pancras International for the rather wonderful Family Tree, yet another track on the show from Lophae’s (that’s ‘Lo-Fi’) album Perfect Strangers (24th January). They are guitarist Greg Sanders, tenor saxophonist Sam Rapley, bassist Tom Herbert and drummer Ben Brown with special guest the Cuban trumpeter Yelfris Valdés.
Back over to New York for a terrific version of Milt Jackson’s Bag’s Groove, a second track in two weeks from guitarist Pasquale Grasso’s jaw-dropping Fervency (Sony Masterworks, 7th February), with double bassist Ari Roland and drummer Keith Balla.
I was enchanted by vocalist Martina DaSilva, guitarist Alex Goodman and pianist Glenn Zaleski’s version of the Henry Mancini and Leslie Bricusse theme from Two for the Road (La Reserve, 14th February). An excellent song choice that I’ve not heard for some time, and It took me back to the 1967 Stanley Donen movie starring Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney - here’s the trailer.
Also this week, there’s the mighty seventeen minute title track from trumpeter Charles Sullivan’s Genesis (Strata-East, 1974), with alto saxophonist Sonny Fortune, pianist Stanley Cowell, double bassist Alex Blake, drummer Billy Hart and conguero Lawrence Killian.
I’m hoping this sensational post bop album gets the deluxe reissue treatment it deserves from the new Mack Avenue and Strata-East partnership. The first four titles have just been announced, they are Charlie Rouse Two Is One, Stanley Cowell MUSA Ancestral Streams, Charles Tolliver Music Inc Live at Slugs Vol. 1 & II and Pharaoh Sanders Izipho Zam (My Gifts).
Here’s video of Sullivan, known for over forty years as Kamau Adilifu, leading his quartet of pianist Michael Cochrane, double bassist Calvin Hill and drummer Darrell Green at Symphony Space in New York on May 27, 2016.
For the second week running there’s something from the drummer and percussionist Leon Parker. Radio Play is from The Leo (Ropeadope, 2021), and features vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant (quoting from I Didn’t Know What Time It Was), pianist Aaron Goldberg and tenor saxophonist Jacques Schwarz-Bart. Many thanks to Tom Storer for getting in touch to say that he saw Parker playing with double bassist Clovis Nicolas, pianist Simona Premazzi and trumpeter Jeremy Pelt in Paris at Duc des Lombards in 2023.
And finally….I was sorting through a box of cassettes and found Taco Taco Taco! (We Jazz, 2015), a tape-only EP release by Finnish trio Buba Wii Aa - organist Mikael Myrskog, bassist Eero Seppä and drummer Sami Nummela. I couldn’t resist playing Day Off in San Francisco, which captures that ‘60’s cigarette on a beach boulevard, house party with a hangover next morning feeling.
To listen to this week’s Jazz on The Beach on Mixcloud, just click below:
Blues Beach
It’s Bluestime! On this week’s playlist we have Albert King’s Born Under a Bad Sign, Sly Williams’ (Curly Page or whatever his real name was) electrifying Boot Hill, Junior Wells’ It’s My Life, Baby with probably the best Buddy Guy guitar on record, Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson’s classic Gangster of Love, Robert Johnson’s lemon squeezing Travelling Riverside Blues, Earl Hooker’s Blue Guitar (to which Willie Dixon wrote some lyrics, Muddy Waters overdubbed a vocal and You Shook Me was born), Louisiana’s Li’l Millet & His Creoles with Rich Woman, Eddie Hinton’s soul stirring (I Got to) Testify, Henry Thomas’ Fishing Blues and much more.
To listen to this week’s Blues Beach on Mixcloud, just click below:
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Jazz On The Beach broadcasts live every Wednesday evening from 10:00 PM to midnight (UK time), with a repeat on Monday mornings from 2:00 AM to 4:00 AM (UK time).
Blues Beach broadcasts live every other Thursday from 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM (UK time).