By Gary Chapin
I don’t want to seem like I’m setting up a strawman, but recordings with titles like this, positing a tangible connection between Our Kind of Music and the blues often leave me asking questions. In this case, those questions would be
“Hey, what do you mean by Modicum?”
and
“Also, what do you mean Blues?”
There is, of course, no I-IV-V-ing going on—that would be an abundance of blues—and it’s more than a mere spiritual nodding—which would be a smidgeon . The modicum given to us by this collective of free improvisers comes in the form of phrases, allusions, and techniques. It’s quite splendid, actually.
For example, when Perelman and Wooley trade phrases call-and-response-ishly, an uncanny resonance sends me back through the 20th century. They play phrases or fragments of phrases, trumpet and reeds, that hearken as far back as the sections of Basie and Ellington. I hear a string of notes on this recording, and then I can hear it in the voices of Harry Edison and Paul Gonsalves. I wouldn’t put money on it, but even the timbre of these sections sometimes comes across with a pre-Coltrane fullness. These are flashes, of course, sunny forest glens in the rocky terrain of their free blowing, but it has an impact, and, while the two landscapes are different, they are connected and always have been.
Tom Rainey and Mark Helias have become, for me, the best drum/bass team since Dave Holland and Barry Altschul. I’ve had cause to praise each separately in these pages in the past, now I can celebrate them together. The reference to Holland/Altschul, of course, isn’t a shallow one. Those two giants were central to Anthony Braxton’s mid-seventies quartet masterpieces ( Five Pieces 1975 and New York Fall 1974) another uncanny set of music that showed us early on blues and Our Kind of Music in conversation.
Matt Moran, finally, is the MVP of this All-Star Team. The vibes do seem to be having a moment, but even in the current context, Moran’s playing had an especially magical effect on me, beautiful and gnarled simultaneously, and recorded wonderfully. It brought to mind—and I am not making this up—Milt Jackson’s playing on that great Miles Davis and the Jazz Giants set with “Bag’s Groove” and “The Man I Love.” Jackson is, not incidentally, the greatest of the blues vibraphonists, but also stunning and subtle and an absolutely necessary part of that early masterpiece’s success. The same can be said here of Moran.
The wonder of A Modicum of Blues isn’t in its references to the past or conversations with blues and jazz history, but the title does invite you to make those connections. Even without those, however, the five part suite is a five-star achievement—which feels almost obvious given the players involved. This is a run-don’t-walk situation. As I said, 5-stars.
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