Search - Spike Robinson :: Odd Couple

Zap Those Zithers!

Samuel Chell | Kenosha,, WI United States | 03/11/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Spike Robinson, who didn't start recording until he was in his 50's, has never sounded better than on this session with keyboardist Rob Mullins and two other Denver-based musicians. His tone is robust, his articulations clean, his elaborately spun-out melodic lines breathtaking. It's as though his aggressive, much younger rhythm mates pushed him to play with renewed vigor, shaving 30 years off his age at the time of the recording.



Mullins is also extremely impressive, matching Spike's inventive work with Bud Powell-like phrases and surprising chord substitutions. Unfortunately, he can't keep his hands off his synthesizer, providing gratuitous string backdrops and even vocal doo-wop interjections behind Spike. Perhaps few of us in the late '80's would have guessed how dated and banal the electronic effects would sound by the year 2000. It's a shame because the session, with Jill Frederickson on drums and Fred Hamilton on bass, swings hard from the first to the last track.



Pick it up if you can find it. Spike's playing is a thing of beauty, rising above some of the mundane artifice that muddies the mix."