Trio Jeepy cover

Trio Jeepy

Released

Recorded in January 1988, this long double LP (originally 82 minutes, but a nine-minute version of “Stardust” was cut to get it onto a single CD) features Marsalis and drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts, both 27 at the time, with bassist Milt Hinton, who was 50 years their senior, having been born in 1910. Hinton worked with Cab Calloway in the 1930s and ’40s, and Louis Armstrong after that, but by the 1950s he was an extraordinarily popular studio musician, appearing on hundreds of sessions for all sorts of artists and earning the nickname “the Judge.” He anchors the trio on all but three tracks here, most of which are standards like “The Nearness of You,” “Three Little Words,” “Makin’ Whoopee” and Billy Strayhorn’s “UMMG (Upper Manhattan Medical Group),” but there’s also one Marsalis original, “Housed From Edward” (“housed” = stolen; “Edward” = Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington) and “Gutbucket Steepy,” a blues improvisation credited to all three men that kicks off with one of the stateliest walking intros you’ll ever hear. On the remaining tracks — versions of Sonny Rollins’ “Doxy” and Ornette Coleman’s “Peace,” and the Marsalis original “Random Abstract (Tain’s Rampage)” — Delbert Felix takes over on bass, but the general “doing it the old-school way” mood remains in effect.

Phil Freeman

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