BOB JAMES — One (review)

BOB JAMES — One album cover Album · 1974 · Fusion Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Sean Trane
After over a decade of solo work silence (Bob James played in Sarah Vaughan’s backing band for most of the late 60’s), Bob James came back around the middle of the 70’s with a very different aesthetics than his previous two album of the early 60’s, then had gone to become a demanded session player in the early 70’s, which is probably how he ended up in Creed Taylor’s musical environment. A rather simplistic but impressive artwork featuring a bronze door-ornament graces BJ’s first solo album, where you’ll find many of his future collabs, like Gadd, Resnicoff, Friedman, Grover Jr, Thad Jones and more.

Opening on the exciting almost 10-mins Valley Of The Shadow, we are confronted with a wild progressive JR/F with excitement, drama and some limit-kitsch but enthralling brass arrangements. Further down the album, Soulero opens on a kind of bolero (Ravel’s comes to mind), but the musical thread slowly changes, because the arrangements and BJ’s Rhodes add an unusual touch. Great stuff. Even more daring is the Moussorgsky piece Bald Mountain that sounds as bold as Emerson Lake & Palmer’s version, but not as much as Tomita’s, but the music breaks into a great Rhodes-led studio jam in its second half. The soft mid-tempo slightly funky but brass-less cover of Feel Like Making Love marks a bit of a pause between steaming-hot tracks, slightly reminiscent of the softer Oblivion Express tracks. The closing Nautilus track is one of BJ’s better-known number, partly because it got sampled by many artistes in the late 80’s, including, I believe, Run-DMC. Within the first few seconds, the bass riff emerges from the slightly-chaotic keyboard and we’re embarking on superb 20 000 leagues trip above the stratosphere. Too bad the album is so short really, just clocking above the half-hour mark.

Unfortunately, the album is “plagued” with the sore-thumbed In The Garden cover, and despite some interesting jazzy rearrangements, it still sounds like bad country piece, partly due to Weissberg’s pedal steel guitar and McCracken’s harmonica, further plagued by overwhelming (but ultimately under-whelming) string arrangements. That track is really the only lesser moment of an otherwise close-to-perfection album. Soooooo, with the present album, we’re not yet in the smooth-jazz mould that would become BJ’s trademark, but we’re definitely still in the cool JR/F realm that was making the early 70’s so special.

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