Soul jazz makes my heart sing...

There is NO question - I LOVE the genre of jazz born in the late 50s from within the hard bop core - known as SOUL JAZZ. It is funky, filled with R and B and gospel attitude and just gets my mojo workin' and my back field in motion! To be sure, some jazz cats dispute the authenticity of this groove - too much like rock and roll or Motown they carp - but damn if I don't love me some soul jazz!

+ I knew it from the time I was a kid and heard Mongo Santamaria's "Watermelon Man." That track just sizzles - with lots of room for improvisation - and a back beat that won't quit. It also mixes a totally fun Afro-Cuban thing into the mix, too - that genre-bending thing that so feeds my soul and makes my heart sing - and makes me smile like a child. Just listen to the way they slide into the melody - holding back with tension only to release it at just the right moment with such finesse! And that Latin rhythm section is killer, too. Herbie Hancock couldn't resist it either and brought it home on his first album for Blue Note: Takin' Off.

+ Then there is my other favorite - Cannonball Adderley's 1966 version of soul jazz pianist Joe Zawinall's "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" - a song that sounds to me like going to church and falling in love all at the same time. I can still remember hearing it for the first time on the radio when I was 14 - got goose bumps - and literally could not move for the 5:10 the record played. (Ok, it was cut to about 3:40 for Top 40 radio, I know.) Just listen to this dude play - no wonder he went on to work with Miles on "Bitches Brew" and then Weather Report with Wayne Shorter.

I got a chance to play both these tunes (and a bunch of others) late this afternoon with the Sunday Jazz Improv at Pittsfield's Lichtenstien Arts Center. These guys are solid jazz men - much finer musicians than me - and I could tell my genre-bending attitude made some uncomfortable as I don't organically go to the sweet ballads or Ellington classics. But they made room for me and I learned a whole lot and am very, very grateful. Got a chance to practice "So What" as well as some really fun Latin/Bossa Nova tunes, too.

But I have to confess: I can't get enough soul jazz - it is somehow in my blood - and when I got a chance to pedal in Bb on the transition of "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" - I was flying. Made me think of what Les McCann and Eddie Harris put down or even what Quincy Jones does on"Killer Joe" cuz it just cooks! God damn it... I'm trying to make it real... compared to what?!?