J.S. just gets better and better
B. Guerrero | 03/04/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Thank goodness for virtual record stores like Amazon. I'm so sick and tired of walking into CD shops that carry jazz, only to find rows and rows of Chet Baker and Miles Davis, but nothing - or next to nothing - on Jack Sheldon. Give me a break! Jack Sheldon is immediately identifiable from his first three or four notes on any given take. His sound is every bit as individual and characteristic as that of Chet, Miles, or Diz' even. This is a travesty, folks. Early in his career, Jack was overshadowed by the supposedly more sexy Chet Baker - the Chris Botti of his day. Yet, early Sheldon performances with The Curtis Counce Group; The Marty Paich Dek-Tette; Art Pepper, and the one disc that he made with Herbie Mann (with Mann playing an excellent bass clarinet exclusively), all show that he could easily hold his own against the highly tauted Baker. Granted, Chet Baker had a far more marketable singing voice. Anyway, after becoming an established "west coast" jazz musician - as opposed to Baker's fully international career - Jack Sheldon spent several decades playing in the house band on the Merv Griffin Show; often times playing the role of Merv's comic sidekick. Naturally, this lead many folks to conclude that he was no longer a serious jazzer. Well, I have news for those particular people: you couldn't possibly have been more wrong.
Sheldon's jazz chops never went away. And while his singing voice has deteriorated to some degree (he's 75!), his trumpet playing has simply gotten better and better. Today, at age 75, Jack Sheldon continues to study trumpet with Uan Rasey. Never heard of Uan Rasey? Well trust me, you've heard him play! Mr. Rasey played top trumpet on a great number of big Hollywood movies - his most famous and recognizable solos being in the Jack Nicholson/Faye Dunaway blockbuster that has spurred the entire neo-noir craze, "Chinatown". Remember him now? If you buy Jack Sheldon's latest CD, "Listen Up", you'll hear that Jack now plays with a similar sounding, broad and confident tone in his middle and upper registers as that of Uan Rasey's. Yet, the trademark gentle, "foo-foo" style and tone to his low register is perfectly intact. In short, Jack's dynamic range and range of color has increased significantly. All of this wouldn't matter if it weren't also for the fact that he's a hell of an improviser - more like a composer on the spot than yet another trumpeter with a bag full of fast scales and screeching high notes. There's nothing generic about J.S.'s playing what-so-ever. I like to think of him as the Bill Evans of the trumpet. He's makes me think of the many excellent tenor sax players who didn't try to change the course of jazz history - people like Dexter Gordon, Teddy Edwards, and Benny Golson (who really should team up with J.S., before it's too late) - just to name a few. Need I heap on more platitudes?
"Listen Up" is excellent in every conceivable way, including the solid and imaginitive contributions from his California Cool Quartet. In fact, it's so good that you won't miss Jack's singing and/or off-color jokes (which I like); or regret the absence of a good reed man. It also has great sound. "Listen Up" is one man's statement that's also just fun, musical, and enjoyable to listen to. Imagine that!"
Jack at the Very Top of His Game...
Douglas McIntyre | Los Angeles, CA | 03/13/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"...And Sheldon's game is big league all the way. Frankly, Jack Sheldon is the most under-appreciated great Jazz artist of our time. He is most known for his work on Merv' show, or School House Rock, which is kind of like remembering Jean Shepherd just for "A Christmas Story" and ignoring his singular work of genuis in radio. Jack Sheldon is a true triple threat--he's funnier than most comics, has a more distinctive and authentic voice than most singers, and is without question one of the all time great trumpet players. The Jazz snobs, especially the east coast crowd, have written Jack off as Chet Baker-lite, or worse. Give "Listen Up" a listen and then we'll talk. At 75, Sheldon's tone, imagination, and purity of sound are possibly better than ever. This is Jack's first instrumental album in decades, and while I adore his voice (just ask Tierney Sutton) and consider him one of the great comic minds (He's just naturaly funny even when he's not being filthy), Jack's soul pours out of his horn. There are a lot of great trumpet players who can swing, bop and blast, but there are very, very few who can move you with a ballad the way Sheldon can. He turns that cold hunk of metal into a wounded or happy heart, no mean feat at any age.
Listen to "Listen Up", and then hop a plane and fly to Los Angeles and see Jack play live, because that's as good as it gets. He is a national treasure, Listen Up un-buries him.
"
Attention Must Be Paid.
Samuel Chell | Kenosha,, WI United States | 06/02/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I second the previous reviewers' sentiments. If Jack Sheldon's not a national treasure, he certainly is as good a trumpet player as any over the course of sixty years. Listen to the timeless music of the Curtis Counce recordings from the late 1950s, then try to tell me that the challenger to Miles Davis was Chet Baker rather than Jack. Even then, he had as identifiable, highly personal, inimitable a voice as any musician. Even on large-orchestra studio sessions, all it takes is a single note, and you know it's Jack--intimate, controlled and precise, logical and flowing yet full of whimsy and surprises.
To some extent it's hard to believe that his relative obscurity was entirely due to location or the color of his skin or his less-than-Elvis (or Chet) good looks. Jack never looked quite as "serious" about his art as the others and was never the best caretaker of his own career. To him, a gig was a gig, and he probably always loved life (and other things) as much as the music. But if he wasn't as serious about himself as other, more publicized names, he had to be serious about his trumpet playing, regardless of how humble he sounded when he talked about it. Like Diz, he's always been a "player" in the best sense of the word. And this is a game you don't get good at unless you take it very, very seriously. In fact, maybe Jack has been taking the trumpet a bit too seriously--
His feeling that for some reason he needed to "rebuild" his sound, thereby putting himself in peril of sounding like everybody else, is at once laudable and troubling. With that vibrant, glowing tone and that airy cushion of sound that once distinguished players like Art Farmer and Kenny Dorham, Sheldon should be the teacher, not the other way around. In any case, it would be great to hear him in a quintet featuring another bonafide "star" (definitely too late for Golson, but Moody and Rollins can still deliver, and perhaps Ira Sullivan too--or go with a young tiger who knows the post-bop mainstream and can swing straightahead--someone like Eric Alexander, or Chris Potter (who was Red Rodney's frontline protegé before getting all wrapped up in postmodern eclecticism and "beyond" sounds)."
Track Listings (10) - Disc #1