Jeff McCord on the month’s new releases
Robert Glasper
Blue Note
Houston’s ROBERT GLASPER is a formidable piano talent with a penchant for lush harmony and mainstream jazz uncommon for a player in his twenties. Were that the whole story, you might lump him into the Wynton Marsalis tradition: fastidiously devoted to jazz history and short on innovation. Yet Glasper has also logged time with some of hip-hop’s finest, including Bilal and Q-Tip (from A Tribe Called Quest). And, like fellow Houston pianist Jason Moran, his tastes range wide. If it hasn’t always been easy to discern these influences, IN MY ELEMENT (Blue Note) brings them to the fore. Glasper’s pieces are longer, and his trio (Vincente Archer on bass, Damion Reid on drums) tackles them with swagger. The opener, “G&B,” flies with a marvelously skittish rhythm, then breaks down as Glasper tears off single-note runs at bebop speed. Even when he covers Sam Rivers and the late J Dilla and mixes Radiohead with Herbie Hancock, Glasper is clearly onto something all his own.
Sunny Sweeney
Big Machine Records
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What’s improv comedy got to do with country music? Not much, it turns out, which is why when SUNNY SWEENEY sang in a few skits as an aspiring comedian in New York, her fellow actors—walloped by her voice—sent her packing back to Texas. She had learned guitar only a few years earlier in high school and had never sung professionally, but no matter; by 2004 the Longview native had plunged headlong into a music career. Now her debut, HEARTBREAKER’S HALL OF FAME (Big Machine), is liable to line up all manner of converts. There aren’t many practitioners left of this kind of music—unadorned instrumentation augmented by pedal steel, pronounced rural accents that turn words like “well” into three syllables—which makes this gem of an album so refreshing. Sweeney’s writing has a ways to go, but she’s smart enough to surround herself with veterans (Jim Lauderdale’s “Refresh My Memory” is a real standout), and she sings as if it’s exactly what she was born to do.
Epic Legacy
WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Sly Stone
Even in the insane creativity of 1967’s Summer of Love, they were peerless: Sly (Sylvester Stewart) and his multiracial, multigendered Family Stone band electrified the world, rolling everything from doo-wop to acid rock into upbeat soul. Yet by 1974, the group was in splinters, and Sly—fighting drug addiction and the onset of disco—would practically vanish. Until now. A Grammy Awards tribute concert last year lured the Denton native briefly back into the spotlight, and in January he appeared with his sister Vet’s band (Family Stone, natch). This month Epic Legacy is reissuing the original band’s seven albums (A Whole New Thing, Dance to the Music, Life, Stand!, There’s a Riot Going On, Fresh, Small Talk), and Sly has even claimed to be working on an album himself. The reclusive genius may just take us higher once again.
Booker T. Jones
Known for his magic in the Stax Records studio in the sixties, the Tennessee keyboardist—whose career comprises performances with not only his group, the MGs, but also such artists as Neil Young and Willie Nelson—is a special guest at this month’s South by Southwest Music Festival, in Austin.
What’s your proudest musical moment? The first time I heard “Green Onions” on a radio station in Memphis. That moment was recently replayed as I was [listening to the radio on] the Golden Gate Bridge. The thrill has not diminished at all.
The song was almost an afterthought. We arrived at the studio to back up an artist that didn’t show. We started jamming on a riff that I had been playing around with on piano, which turned out to be “Green Onions.” I played it on a Hammond organ to match another song we had recorded.
Describe a Stax session. I started in the tenth grade; I’d go after school. My first session was for Rufus and Carla Thomas. A writer would have a song idea and team up with a lyricist or musician; then the band would record it. Sessions went until six or seven, when the musicians left for their club gigs. Once [Stax] became successful, we quit our club gigs and sessions ran later, sometimes most of the night.
How did you meet Willie Nelson? Willie rented the apartment underneath mine in Malibu, in 1976. We started jamming at night on his or my deck by the beach. We ended up in the studio later that year and recorded some of those songs. It became the Stardust album.
