Feature photo: Ben Pier
Purpose. That’s the overriding feature of all of James Brandon Lewis’ music. When the tenor saxophonist, composer and bandleader sits down to create a new album, it’s a coherent project in the truest sense, covering an aspect within his wide areas of interest. Whether it’s a contemplation of surrealism (An UnRuly Manifesto), an investigation into the accomplishments of George Washington Carver (Jesup Wagon) or even an inquiry into molecular biology (Molecular), Lewis brings a full commitment armed with deep study to each and every one of his undertakings, and the music is cannily molded around it.
His latest endeavor For Mahalia, With Love (Tao Forms) is not merely a tribute to a concept or an historical figure set to music, but a tribute and celebration of music itself. Gospel queen Mahalia Jackson (gospel composer Thomas Dorsey proclaimed her the ‘Empress,’ actually) is to gospel what Louis Armstrong is to jazz; like Satchmo, she popularized her genre and became its first real superstar.
To those unfamiliar with Jackson’s career, it might seem that Lewis was trying to tie Jackson’s music to jazz, but the truth is, she was already closely linked to the genre; her vocal delivery was greatly improvisational and her music served as the introduction to gospel for many white jazz fans. Jackson was even featured on a Duke Ellington record, Black, Brown and Beige. And those old spirituals became a great source for jazz covers much like Tin Pan Alley songs have, and it’s arguably because of Mahalia Jackson.
The love for Jackson is a love that passed from Lewis’ grandmother, who experienced seeing the icon perform live as a child and her wonderment of what she witnessed made a lasting impression on the young grandson that sustained throughout his development into one of New York’s most widely regarded jazz musicians of his generation.
To help carry out his latest labor of love, Lewis summoned his unsurpassed Red Lily Quintet, the guys who brought us Jesup Wagon. That means Kirk Knuffke on cornet, Chris Hoffman on cello, William Parker on bass and Chad Taylor on drums. They enable Lewis to undertake the road not travelled in tributing these mostly traditional songs by drawing attention to the similarities between the spontaneity and spiritual fervor in Mahalia’s voice and that of the best jazz.
Indeed, for the opening soliloquy of “Swing Low,” Lewis seems to undertake the role of the lead singer and her backing chorus at the same time. Then the rhythm section kicks into gear, formed by the braided lines between Hoffman and Parker. Knuffke and Lewis enter with improvised but intertwined lines of their own. It’s very modern jazz but with a joy of a Sunday morning revival. Rhythm, a driving one, also casts a new light on “Wade In The Water,” and after the straightforward statement of the theme by the horns, everyone blurs the distinction between carrying the melody and improvising, just allowing themselves to be overtaken by instinct. The Parker/Hoffman double-bowing underscores the dirge mood that marks “Calvary;” Taylor’s precarious drums and the weeping and increasingly urgent front line completes a portrait of sorrow.
You’ll easily recognize “Go Down Moses,” even when Knuffke dances around Lewis’ lyric line and Taylor is endlessly testing the rhythm and tempo to inject a novel kind of vitality into the song. When everyone but the drummer and bassist fades away, it turns out to be a segue into a full-on celebration.
Lewis once again takes jazz into new places by using tradition as the launch point into the leading edge, seeing jazz as a continuum along the same thread originally unspooled by Buddy Bolden some one hundred and twenty years ago. The opening moments of “Sparrow” — which is an amalgamation of the spiritual “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” and a Lewis-penned “Even The Sparrow” — lays to bare the overlap between traditional Southern gospel music and the forward-pushing spiritual jazz of mid-60’s John Coltrane. They share that same solemness, sanctity and directness.
“Were You There” is the most deconstructed of these gospel covers, hardly recognizable with the unsettled rhythm section but Lewis’ highly emotionally charged but controlled delivery gets the point of the song across, anyway. “Precious Lord” is an outpouring of group expression, the kind of endeavor that shows how beauty emerges when highly schooled musicians put aside their formal education in a box and run on pure adrenaline.
For Mahalia, With Love is coming out today (September 8, 2023). It will be available at all the usual outlets, including Bandcamp.
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