Tiddy Boom

Chat for even just a half-hour with one of today's top saxophonists and you are as likely to hear the names "Young" and "Hawkins" as you are to hear "Coltrane", "Rollins", or (for a more contemporary influence) "Brecker". Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins, the yin and yang of the jazz saxophone tradition of the swing era, live in every player, one way or another.

Tiddy Boom is the latest recording from a mid-career master of the moment, tenor and soprano saxophonist Michael Blake. Blake has made superb music in recent years, usually music that uses elements of rock, shifting time signatures, advanced forms, or any manner of elements that are not necessarily "mainstream".

His latest, however, looks into history: a tribute to Young and Hawkins through a commission funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Tiddy Boom is a set of tunes originally titled "Contrasts in Individualism". Working with his old Jazz Composers Collective mates Frank Kimbrough (piano) and Ben Allison (bass) as well as drummer Rudy Royston, Blake has crafted a canny set of brand new tunes that channel "Pres" and "Bean" without sounding old. Goodness knows, those two masters were always fresh. And so this music, which leaps over a few styles and feels, comes off not as a throwback or reclamation project but rather as a way of alluding to old masters in a fresh way.

And, hoooo, this is a swinging album. "Coastline" is a tricky bebop theme, played in unison by Kimbrough's Monk-ish right hand and Blake's tenor (his only horn on this project), perhaps reminiscent of the band for which Hawkins hired the young Thelonious. Blake jumps out with a feather-light solo that outlines the chord structure in a linear way, strolling atop bass and drums without piano accompaniment. Then Kimbrough jumps in with just a single-note line. The two soloists trade eight-bar statements for a while, then they just play together in an undulating, contrapuntal duet. Slick!

All these moments are ones that, I suppose, you might have heard on jazz records of fifty years ago, sixty years ago, maybe farther back still. But that's okay - to every jazz recording is about innovation. And, besides, there is plenty here that refracts and reworks tradition in sharp, knowing ways. Most importantly, every track rethinks its influences through the voice of a mature, individual player. Michael Blake never vanishes behind his influences. His own sound is front and center.

And that, of course, is how you become an influence yourself, which is a status Michael Blake has undoubtedly already earned with younger players.
(Pop Matters, January 2015)