(editor’s note – no ex post facto proof of Cal Tjader)
Lionel Hampton’s All-Stars outshine jazz greats in Spa festival
by Matthew Maguire, The Knickerbocker News, July 2, 1979
Can a jazz band that plays a disco version of “Ain’t Misbehavin” upstage Freddie Hubbard, Dizzy Gillespie, Hubert Laws and George Benson?
Most jazz fans would laugh off such a suggestion – unless they were among more than 10,000 at the Newport-Saratoga jazz festival Sunday, when Lionel Hampton’s All-Star band, incredibly, pulled it off.
The veteran vibraphonist’s unusual and not necessarily noble accomplishment capped off a day of generally rewarding but sometimes disappointing jazz at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.
The National Jazz Ensemble, the David Friesen Trio, Willie Bobo’s Latin-flavored band, veteran bluesman B.B. King and veteran bop singer Betty Carter performed early in the 13-hour show and offered more or less what was expected – quality music in different styles.
Gerry Mulligan’s big band evoked mixed emotions. Mulligan certainly didn’t need or use the whole band. He was in superb solo form on tunes such as “K-4 Pacific” and “Satin Doll,” but the big band added nothing.
Only pianist Mitchel Forman, the surprise star of the afternoon, gave Mulligan any real support.
The nadir of the afternoon was the performance of reedman Ronnie Laws and his group, “Pressure.” The six-piece band gave the audience an overdose of well-played but repetitive funk. Laws plays tenor and soprano saxophones competently enough, but never seemed to provide solo material on more than simple two- or four-chord patterns.
The festival’s all-star jam session certainly included enough heavyweights – Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis and Freddie Hubbard on trumpets, Eddie Harris and Ronnie Laws on saxes, Hubert Laws on flute, George Benson on guitar and Roy Haynes and Art Blakey on drums, among others.
But it should have been better than it was.
Faddis and Hubbard played great trumpet solos on everything they touched, and Mulligan and Foreman pitched in with fine performances on an instant Mulligan composition called “Saratoga.”
Hampton upstaged them all, even after his disco desecration of “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” After he and fellow stars Cat Anderson, Doc Cheatham, Curtis Fuller, Benny Powell and Arnett Cobb finished whipping the crowd into a frenzy, it demanded and received five encores.
The Berkshire Eagle, June 28, 1979
Recent Comments