JIMMY COBB
Marsalis Music Honors Series: Jimmy Cobb
Marsalis
Music
Back in 1959, a watershed year for jazz music,
Jimmy Cobb played on a session that became Miles Davis’
classic Kind of Blue. For better or worse, he’ll
always be associated with that session, pieces about him
inevitably point out the fact that he is the last surviving
member of that group. I don’t think it goes too far
to say that Cobb is one of the icons of modern jazz drumming,
because the sound he defined with that Miles Davis rhythm
section as well as with the Wynton Kelly trio became as
influential as anything to arise during the past forty-five
years. In addition, Cobb can be heard applying his hard
bop style of drumming behind Cannonball Adderley, Dizzy
Gillespie, Sarah Vaughn, and Sonny Stitt. So it makes perfect
sense for Marsalis Music to initiate its Honors Series of
recordings dedicated to recording new sessions by classic
jazz artists with a session bearing Cobb’s name.
The session here, recorded in May and July
of 2005, features a band worthy of playing with Cobb. Ellis
Marsalis, the patriarch of the Marsalis clan and ,mentor
to almost every pianist of note to come out of New Orleans
for as long as Cobb has been around, plays piano. Bass is
handled ably by British bassist Orlando Le Fleming, who
has long backed many visiting American musicians (including
Branford Marsalis); having moved to New York in 2003, he
has become a permanent member of Jane Monheit’s band.
Australian-born San Francisco transplant Andrew Speight,
alto sax, is the only horn. Speight plays with authority
and can also finesse a ballad, such as Cobb’s composition
“Eleanor (Sister Cobb)”. Together this group
turns in a performance that is reminiscent of some of the
best Blue Note sessions of the 1950s and 60s. There are
no gimmicks here and no pretense of newness, just top-notch
musicians playing together as a solid unit.
Of the ten tracks here, four are Cobb compositions
or co-compositions. “W.K.” is a straight ahead
number that creates a setting for fine solo outings by both
Marsalis and Speight. Of course, Cobb also gets in a solo,
and it’s great to hear him swinging in such rarefied
company. The aforementioned “Eleanor (Sister Cobb)”
is a gorgeous piece on which Speight really shines. “Composition
101” is minor key soul jazz in the Cannonball Adderley
tradition, and the closer, “Tune 341” (Cobb
isn’t so hung up on titles for many of his compositions,
it seems) is an all-out swinger that finds the band playing
like a post-bop dream team. “Tell Me” is an
uptempo Ellis Marsalis composition that finds Speight taking
off on long flights of fancy that recall Bird or, perhaps,
Phil Woods.
The remaining tracks offer a variety of composers
and moods, but two that particularly stand out are the Rodgers/Hart
composition “Johnny One Note,” which allows
Cobb to switch effortlessly between a Latin beat and high-powered
uptempo bop piledriving, and the opener, Henry Mancini’s
“Mr. Lucky,” which sets the mood immediately
and sets the bar quite high, as all four musicians turn
in hot solos right off the bat.
Cobb has been woefully under recorded as a
leader, with releases from Jimmy Cobb’s Mob in 1998
and 2003. This entry in the Marsalis Music Honors Series
helps rectify the situation with a really solid outing that
features a great group of musicians simply playing together,
utilizing a lifetime of musical experience, and when all
is said and done, that’s what it’s all about.
Anyone studying jazz drumming out there who wants to hear
a first rate drummer doing his thing should pick this up.
