My new favorite album this month is called Sound Travels by drummer extraordinaire Jack DeJohnette. It was released in early 2012. DeJohnette offers up compositions in a number of different global styles that are all more or less jazz-oriented but – and this is what I love about him more than anything – the music is so indescribably engrossing and interesting it’s not really what most people think of as jazz.
Contributors on the album include upright bassist Esperanza Spalding, guitarist Lionel Loueke, and Ambrose Akinmusire on trumpet. Also Tim Ries on saxophone and Luisito Quintero on percussion. Bobby McFerrin, Bruce Hornsby, and Spalding herself (whose voice is truly charming and funked up at the same time) provide vocals on several numbers.
For me, two of the absolute knockout songs are the first on the album, “Enter Here,” and the last, “Home.” Both are beautiful solo piano pieces played by DeJohnette.
The most lovely song on the album, though, “Oneness,” features Bobby McFerrin in top form, with DeJohnette on piano and Luisito Quintero on percussion.
One reason I appreciate Sound Travels so much is that we get to hear the maestro of the beat playing piano on many of the numbers. Piano was his first real instrument. What, then, in his career as a time-creator for everyone from Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett to Bill Evans and Herbie Hancock, did he pick up from those gods of the keyboard? In many ways the piano is an advanced and intricate version of a percussion instrument. And what did those guys pick up from him?
DeJohnette died at the age of 83 last fall. We learned from his obituary in The New York Times that his mom is credited with writing the blues standard, “Call It Stormy Monday” (selling the rights to T-Bone Walker for $50). That song is one of my go-tos in warmups on guitar at the end of most of every writing day.
You can write to howdy@flatbranchpress.com. We promise to respond.
Thanks for reading.