Disc of the day: 29-10-09
Quincy Jones: Smackwater Jack (Verve 02527068909)
Ah, time for a little nostalgia. I well remember this from my student days – it came out in 1971 on A&M.
The title track really is a little lame, though it’s nice to hear Quincy singing. The real fun starts with Cast Your Fate To The Wind and a classic Eric Gayle guitar solo. Mr Jones was already busy building up fabulous personnel lists on his records, and the soloists on this disc include Toots Thielemans, Hubert Laws, Freddie Hubbard, Milt Jackson and Jim Hall. Oh, and Bill Cosby gets a vocal spot on the deliriously stupid Hikky-Burr.
The stand-out tracks are the original Jones theme tunes, Ironside and Theme From The Anderson Tapes – just check out Freddie’s solo on Ironside – and while the version here of What’s Going On might not initially seem to add much to Marvin Gaye’s original, it all kicks off on the hard swinging outro, a masterful arrangement with strong solos and an ace massed strings section inspired by Toots’s harmonica line.
The whole shebang ends with a six minute, 38 second history of blues guitar styles from “Roots to Fruits” in which Gayle, Hall, Thielemans and Joe Beck do their business.
For those who don’t own the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia, this disc is still worth hearing for Quincy’s glorious production values pre-MJ, for the great electric piano and rhythm sound, and for those sweet solos from Laws, Hubbard et al.
