Ali, Rashied Quintet – “Judgement Day Vol. 1 ” – [Survival Records]

Jawbone   11/16/2006   CD, Jazz

Very solid effort from this NYC quintet led by the Art Blakey of our day. Drummer Ali has played with the likes of Coltrane (John and Alice), Pharoah Sanders, Sonny Fortune and James Blood Ulmer, but he is also known for nurturing young upcoming talent. This disc features great blowing by Jumaane Smith (trumpet) and Lawrence Clark (tenor) along with the very McCoy Tyneresque tinkling of Greg Murphy (piano).

Hard bop is the subject at hand. And much of this disc sounds like it could have been recorded in 1957, which is entirely a good thing. A lot of hard blowing swinging jazz came out of that period, right around when the avant-garde was starting to bubble and burst forth from the be-bop scene.

Standout tracks are:

4. “Judgement Day” (8:17) Middle Eastern sounding theme, fast hard swinging be-bop.

6. “Raw Fish” (5:58) Slow, quirky, dissonant, but nicely held together by harmonic horns.

9. “Multi Culti” (6:28) Gorgeous take on a multi-tempo Don Cherry composition.

–Jawbone