Released in May 1979, Robben Ford’s The Inside Story is the unlikely place where the Yellowjackets got their start. That’s right, one of jazz fusion’s most successful and longest-running groups was born out of the sessions for someone else’s record from the late ’70s, and one that – at least at the time – didn’t make much of a ripple.
At this point, Robben Ford had already recorded a couple of of records under his own name, but The Inside Story – the only one he made between 1976 and 1988 – established him as a force in both fusion jazz and blues worlds. The session, produced by Stax legend Steve Cropper, featured a trio of young, relative unknowns who were recruited to be Ford’s rhythm section: keyboardist Russell Ferrante, bassist Jimmy Haslip and drummer Ricky Lawson. The group found instant rapport, and that quickly transformed them into their own band, the Yellowjackets.
A couple of years later, they snagged a Warner Bros. contract. The Yellowjackets’ first album followed in 1981, with Robben Ford on board as an unofficial fourth member – but that’s another story. The Inside Story has its own tale to tell, and it’s a story about the music.
Ford is an electric guitarist of the highest order. His lines are clean, explosive and never seem to run out of ideas. Wielding a Gibson ES at the time and playing fusion with heaping helpings of blues and rock, it’s easy to put The Inside Story alongside Larry Carlton’s first post-Crusaders solo records from the same time period. In fact, there’s not that much that separates this album from Carlton’s late ’70s output, but where Carlton’s tone was often a tad jazzier and his licks the very pinnacle of tastiness, Robben Ford matches him in sheer technique and brings out a cleaner tone and more direct rock phrasing. It really comes down to a fine matter of taste, or mood.
Ford’s powerful phrasing ability is magnificently displayed on the opening track, “Magic Sam.” That title suggests the blues of its namesake, but it’s actually this funk-rock fusion gem. A memorably righteous unison line with Ferrante’s synth forms the theme, and then Ford soon dives into his solo. It’s a perfectly constructed piece of rock-guitar soloing, dripping with blues and enunciated with conviction.
“Magic Sam” ranks as one of the better electric rock guitar improvisations I’ve heard, ever. For a long time, I simply listened to that song and discarded the rest of the album, since it’s such a standout. Later, I discovered there’s actually very little that justifies skipping over.
“For the One I Love” slows down to mid-tempo, but possesses a melody that is almost as sophisticated as Steely Dan’s, with Ford again lifting the song to another plane with his solo. “There’s No One Else” is a simmering set of slowed down funk that anticipates the all-instrumental attitude of Tiger Walk nearly 20 years later. The album closes almost as strongly as it opens: The funky number “Tee Time For Eric” boasts propulsive rhythms provided by Ferrante’s piano and Ford’s own, way underrated rhythm guitar work. Haslip, whose bass would become much more prominent with the Yellowjackets, nonetheless supplies a slippery groove underneath that hints at the virtuosity he’d later become known for.
[SOMETHING ELSE! INTERVIEW: Robben Ford joined us to discuss how the Yellowjackets initially formed, saying ‘the original group was indeed meant to come together.’]
Ford didn’t make this an all-fusion album, though. He recorded a couple of blues tracks, “North Carolina” and “Need Somebody,” both of which feature his vocals. Even this early on, Ford struggled with reconciling his love for the blues with his proficiency in jazz-rock. The songs are competent – especially when Ford lays down his magical licks – but they feel a bit out of place on The Inside Story. They’d work much better on a Robben Ford blues record.
Still, The Inside Story elsewhere proves to be a crisp, well-executed set of fusion fare which showed little sign that the movement was running out of gas. More than that, it served as the launching pad for the Yellowjackets, one of the few fusion bands of note in the decade that followed. Both things make this an album worth returning to again and again.
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