Chris Cortez
Hold It Right There
Blue Bamboo Music
Hold It Right There, Lullaby Of Birdland, Ain’t Misbehavin’, All Right, Ok, You Win, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight, Jordu, Tico Tico, Stormy Weather, Cloudburst, Benny’s From Heaven, Way Down Yonder In New Orleans, Red Top, The Best Is Yet To Come
Personnel: Chris Cortez, guitar and vocals, Dean Fransen, piano, Sam Bruton, piano, Tommy Sciple, bass, Jeff Mills, drums, Jay Webb, trumpet, Larry Panella, tenor, alto saxophone, clarinet, Reggie Murray, soprano saxophone.
By Gregory J. Robb
Chris Cortez epitomizes so many players who celebrate and perpetuate blues tradition, as a guitarist, as a vocalist, and as an improvisor. Hold It Right There, heard from the doorway of any southern American club, will stop listeners in their tracks. Curious minds are rewarded with a catalogue of jazz standards that pays homage to tight structures and expert conventional playing. Hold It Right There is most likely to make a night for subscribers of traditional jazz.
The record’s title song sends the message immediately. Saxophone and clarinet are tightly woven into standard quartet to blend New Orleans bop with blues. Traditionalists shuffle happily to their fundamental love of this form. Cortez offers rich guitar sound with a drier, more acoustic mix of reed instruments.
Chris Cortez reprises George Shearing and Fats Waller with admirable respect. Sam Bruton’s downbeat piano chords set the table upon which Cortez feasts with the lyrical melody line that makes Lullaby Of Birdland classically appealing. On Ain’t Misbehavin’ Dean Fransen keys a more modern, yet reverent version of Waller’s 1943 stride. These structures have always lent themselves to lengthier exploration. Given the overall length of Hold It Right There, one wonders why Cortez and company seem satisfied to whet our appetites and move on. In this case the musicians had room to further distinguish themselves in context of the overall mandate.
James Taylor’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight signals a change of rhythm that dominates the remainder of the record. Chris Cortez scats and raps in perfectly articulate fit with the vocal role of the blues tradition. Fransen tastefully improvises without pushing the harmonic mood beyond itself.
Cortez diversifies the arrangements as the record progresses. Jordu uses saxophone to unleash the album’s first improvisational suite. Cortez and band segue comfortably into Tico Tico, two minutes of zippy Latin in which Cortez flexes to the optomistic feel of that music. Stormy Weather sedates us with straight quartet augmented by Larry Panella’s clarinet. Chris Cortez concludes with a successful return to the ethno musical domain of 60 year old southern jazz. By the time it is over, all players have taken their turn in the spotlight.
Chris Cortez musically affirms a lifetime of love for the blues. Hold It Right There is a plain, honest statement of that love. The record blazes no trails. Cortez and band prefer to exult in the staff lines laid out in orthodox playing. Reinvention is not imperative to the musician that loves what he is already playing, and this album is regional to that domain. Southern blues lovers will Hold It Right There.