GREG OSBY
Public
Blue
Note
Read the Jazzitude
review of Greg Osby/St. Louis Shoes
Public is Greg Osby’s first
live album since 1998’s Banned In New York.
Coming on the heels of the remarkable St. Louis Shoes,
it provides an excellent opportunity for Osby to expand
the audience he gained with that recording by interspersing
his own compositions with some standard jazz material. On
his own compositions Osby fronts a quartet that include
pianist Megumi Yonezawa, bassist Robert Hurst, and drummer
Rodney Green. On the opening track, the Monkish “Rising
Sign” Osby and Yonezawa negotiate the tune’s
extreme angularity together, but it is the pianist that
makes the more interesting solo statement.
Osby’s alto sound is marvelous, wide
open as Charlie Parker or even Ornette Coleman, but his
compositions sometimes seem as though they are derived according
to a mathematical theory. The only problem is that as cerebrally
interesting as the music sometimes is, it doesn’t
always elicit an emotional response. Everything fits together
perfectly, but doesn’t quite resonate at the gut level.
On four classic numbers—“Summertime,”
“Bernie’s Tune,” “Shaw Nuff,”
and “Lover Man” (on which the group is joined
by singer Joan Osborne)—the group becomes a quintet
with the addition of trumpeter Nicholas Payton. Payton figured
prominently on St. Louis Shoes, and in my review
of that CD I suggested that it would be great to hear these
guys playing together some more. It is—in fact, Payton
seems, on these numbers, to provide the elements missing
from the quartet performances. Though he plays in a completely
modern style and is able to negotiate the standards’
reharmonizations without any difficulty, Payton provides,
in his sound, his style, his very being, a palpable link
to the jazz traditions of the past, from Louis Armstrong
to Charlie Parker with Dizzy Gillespie, to Miles and beyond.
Payton is at home with Osby’s harmonic conceptions
while at the same time being able, with a blues riff here,
a growl there, to keep things very down to earth. On “Shaw
Nuff” he demonstrates the influence of Woody Shaw
and Clifford Brown while the group puts its own spin on
the bop classic.
Osby himself seems more interested and engaged
when he has Payton to play off of. The group’s reworking
of the Gerry Mulligan/Chet Baker vehicle “Bernie’s
Tune” owes its conception as a conversation between
sax and trumpet to Mulligan and Baker, but the content of
that conversation, as had by Osby and Payton, is vastly
different. But Osby’s solo on the piece is grounded
in Charlie Parker even as it builds in both intensity and
angularity, and ultimately it comes across as one of his
best solos on the CD. “Summertime,” an overworked
number if ever there was one, actually comes across as fresh
and interesting, just as it did on St. Louis Shoes.
In fact, the best material in this live set is culled from
St. Louis Shoes, and indicates what a fertile direction
that recording was for Osby.
The only misstep here is “Lover Man,”
which singer Osborne just isn’t strong enough to carry
off, since everyone who hears the song can only think of
Billie Holiday’s version. Similarly, many listeners
will be fixated on the fact that Charlie Parker suffered
a nervous breakdown while recording a version of this song,
a breakdown that was captured on tape and released on record.
No one here has that strong of a reaction, but there are
three succinct, well constructed solos by Payton, Osby,
and Yonezawa, who appears to be a major piano talent.
