Search - Randy Johnston :: Detour Ahead

Chillin'

gallanipper | Kenosha, WI USA | 11/18/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I was driving through Greenfield, Wisconsin a few months ago, when the jazz radio station put on two cuts from this record, the Burt Bacharach/Hal David number A House Is Not A Home, and something from the Carpenters songbook, They Long To Be Close To You. I veered into a parking lot to jot down the artist, Randy Johnston, and the album, Detour Ahead, on a scrap of envelope paper as the DJ gave the name and title to me. I didn't think jazz musicians made records like this one any more. Recording at Van Gelder Recording Studio, just like those hep-cats Jimmy Smith, Shirley Scott, Jack McDuff and John Patton back in the early 60s, Johnston and B-3 baron Joey DeFrancesco get that old Blue Note sound down so cold, you, the listener, will be shivering for days.Johnston's axe is a Guild X-500 on which he can softly, slowly sing the melody to "A House Is Not A Home," then give the spotlight over to DeFrancesco whose keyboard touch makes me want to quote William Carlos Williams:THIS IS JUST TO SAYI have eaten
the plums
that were in
the iceboxand which
you were probably
saving
for breakfastForgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so coldForgive me, if this sounds like hyperbole. DeFrancesco's lines on the B-3 are delicious, so sweet and so cold. I could eat them for breakfast. I also need to mention the rest of the band, including David "Fathead" Newman and Houston Person on tenor sax and Byron Landham on drums. All three have played this music for a long time and it shows. Playing hot or cool, it's never studied. It's just reflex to them. Johnston can fire off notes lickety-split and the band's right there with him, yet giving him space for his guitar to breathe. Is this the best jazz record of the year? You might want to back up and give it the award for the past five or ten. It's a disc free of gimmicks, only good tunes. As Larry Hollis says in his liner notes, "Unlike so many modern fretmen that employ flangers and numerous other devices, Johnston simply plays the guitar."Get it. 'Nuff said."