Cooking with Cool

From the Jazz Vault Dept.: As noted elsewhere in these pages, I’ve been a Scott Hamilton fan since I discovered him at Eddie Condon’s on West 54th Street back in the mid-1970s. So it was a treat to catch up with the group when they performed at the State University at Albany in 1988, and here’s the review I wrote.

                                                                                                   

REPLACING A SAXOPHONE REED takes a few moments; you moisten the new one in your mouth,   unscrew the ligature on the mouthpiece, line up the reed, replace the ligature...

Scott Hamilton

Tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton had occasion to replace his reed during a concert Sunday evening, and he did it in no hurry, laconically performing the necessary action while pianist Mike Ledonne soloed. He’s that cool about it. In fact, all five of the players have such a laid-back aspect that you might worry whether they can cook at all.

They can cook.

This is a group that, with one pianist or another, has been working together for more than 15 years. John Bunch has been at the keyboard for many of the last few years, but Ledonne was an able and inspiring replacement.

Guitarist Chris Flory, drummer Chuck Riggs and bass player Phil Flanigan are, like Hamilton, in their mid-30s. While it’s easy to see them as mainstream, swing-oriented jazzers, they actually assimilate a little bit of everything that has informed acoustic playing since the ‘30s. Hamilton, in whose voice are the accents of Ben Webster and Flip Phillips, is a player with a unique sound who revels in the standards and counts Sinatra as another major influence.

He and Flory complement each other in their solo voices, Flory bridging the styles of Charlie Christian, whose solos opened new paths for the guitar, and George Van Eps, a stalwart of the Big Band days.

Both are good with a riff, combining in harmony or unison on catchy melodies up front or behind another player’s solo. And Ledonne was a gem in the solo department, often experimenting with a single-voiced melody, at times laying in a thick helping of chords.

Flanigan is the malcontent of the group. Boyish, almost bashful-looking beside his bass, he lets go with very bop-inspired lines of solo, egged on by drummer Riggs and the rest of the group before Riggs takes over to trade eight- or four-measure units with the boss.

The repertory was a gamut of standards, familiar to those who know Hamilton’s recordings: “Just in Time,” “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” a bossa-nova “Yesterdays,” “Sweet Georgia Brown,” a lovely “Skylark” – and those were on just the first of two sets.

A standing ovation suggested that Hamilton’s group would be welcomed back very soon. And they gave the crowd its money’s worth, playing for a full two hours after the opening set, by SUNYA’s Jazz Ensemble, in which a number of arrangements by Sammy Nestico and others were given acceptable performances by this overamplified group.

Scott Hamilton Quintet
SUNYA’s Page Hall, May 1

– Metroland Magazine, 5 May 1988