Benny Golson Quartet

Blue Note September 24, 2008

Benny Golson - Saxophone
Buster Williams - Bass
Mike LeDonne - Piano
Joe Farnsworth - Drums

An evening of perfect old school jazz is such a pleasure, and a relief! Benny Golson keeps every little musical detail wonderfully in place and swings hard. Without even a nod to recent jazz, he keeps the purity of the tradition pulsing with life. It is not that you are transported back to the late 50s but that it is transported right into your ears. This quartet was the definition of tight jazz energy.
And, more importantly, they keep their sophistication fun, their tap-along swing complicated and show off by not showing off.

Starting out with a two straight-up bop numbers at reasonable tempos, one from Charlie Parker and another from Howard McGhee, the quartet took long solos that worked new patterns inside the quick chord changes and fluid melodic possibilities. Everyone gets equal time in Golson’s quartet, which more than basic jazz democracy, makes sense with all four members so talented.

Each musician, though, dropped jaws even further on one number in particular. On “Tiny Capers” Joe Farnsworth laid down an amazing solo with brush cymbals that Golson shouting from the side of the stage. A fast-paced take on Coltrane’s “Mr. P.C.” let LeDonne solo with single note lines and crashing chords to his heart’s content. A ballad, “These Foolish Things” dedicated to the late Johnny Griffin was clearly Golson’s baby, with his unmatched sax tone offering up a goodbye to one of jazz’s greats, a close friend of Golson.

Buster Williams showed on every number what he has acquired as sideman of choice for everyone from Herbie Hancock in the 60s to Nancy Wilson to Miles Davis to the most innovative guys half his age. (After checking his website, I started to count the number of recordings he has graced since the 1950s, but I stopped counting around 50. Alphabetically from A, 50 was just to the C’s!)

This quartet had a great internal tension between LeDonne and Farnsworth, who sounded older than their age and Golson and Williams who sounded much younger. The four different generations were a perfect match. What they have in common, besides embodying jazz’s best elements, is a way of phrasing each and every solo so that it sounds composed, considered and yet startlingly fresh. They don’t need to pile on recent jazz embellishment like rap rhythms or jam band grooves. They have enough to say in 4/4, and say it so it sounds fresh, wild and immediate.

Standing at the side and shouting out to the players, “Play it, man” “Yeah, yeah, tell it!” Golson makes it all seem like a jam session. And indeed, he used to hold jam sessions at his home in Philadelphia in the 50s where people like John Coltrane would drop in. That spirit stays with him. He’s someone who takes pleasure in the music, laughing at solos, enjoying himself and really being there, unlike a lot of current musicians who seem like they are a million miles away. The audience at Blue Note, too, was right there with him and the quartet every note of the way, and would have kept applauding for encores all night long if the lights had not come on to usher us all out fully re-jazz-ified.