Strongly Swinging, Delightful Jazz - 4.5 stars
John Tapscott | Canada | 11/24/2008
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Frank Derrick has a wide range of musical experience (mostly jazz related) in Chicago, New York and now South Florida. He is a powerfully swinging, yet tasteful drummer who always serves his band's music very well.
In the case of "The Beat Goes On" recorded in 2007, Derrick presents six tracks of big band jazz and six tracks by a quintet. The arrangers of the big band tracks include Allyn Ferguson, ("Away We Go" from the Buddy Rich Band); Alan Baylock, (a roaring take on the title track); Mike Lewis, ("Summertime" and "My Fair Lady"), and Derrick himself, (the funky "In Stride" and "Slaughter on 10th Avenue"). These tracks, played by a band filled with some of Flordia's finest big band musicians and soloists, are all in the modern big band hard swinging tradition. If you enjoy the music of Buddy Rich, Woody Herman, or Rob McConnell, these tracks will be right up your listening alley. "My Fair Lady" is Derrick's answer to Buddy Rich's "West Side Story"; a medley of several well-known tunes from the musical, moving through several tempos and moods and featuring Derrick in a powerful but not over-long solo. "Slaughter on 10th Avenue" is in a similar vein, though the performance is not as long. Some of the outstanding soloists in the band include saxophonists Billy Ross, Ed Maina, Jim Hayward and Randy Emerick, trombonists Dante Luciani and John Kricker, trumpeters Chris LaBarbera and Augie Haas, as well as the rhythm section of pianist Mike Levine, guitarist Lindsey Blair, bassist Ranses Colon, and Derrick.
If the big band tracks are very good, the quintet tracks are nothing short of excellent. The quintet consists of saxophonist Billy Ross (apart from Derrick, the CD's star musician); trumpeter Melton Mustafa, pianist George Caldwell, and either Chuck Bergeron or Ranses Colon on bass. The hard-swinging "Conquest" and the slightly mysterious, latin-ish "Me Too" were composed by Derrick; "Cute" features Derrick on brushes; "Caravan" echoes Art Blakey's version of the tune. The group swings through Brubeck's tricky "Blue Rondo a la Turk" without missing a beat, and roars through "I Get a Kick Out of You" in tribute to Clifford Brown. Taken as a whole, these quintet tracks are superb, swinging hard bop jazz. They're as good as anything you can hear in this genre today.
The recorded sound quality on both big band and quintet tracks is top-notch with a noticeably "bright" and "up-front" quality. In summary, Frank Derrick's "The Beat Goes On" is a wonderfully entertaining CD; not "profound" perhaps, but hard to beat if you enjoy uplifting and hard swinging jazz music. This highly recommended CD is another gem in Graham Carter's excellent and rapidly-expanding Jazzed Media catalogue.
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Track Listings (12) - Disc #1
