So Esperanza Spalding won the Best New Artist Grammy. And not the Jazz Grammy either, the real Grammy. The big one, at Staples Center, with all those Klieg lights and reporters and Barbra Streisand and after parties and cocaine. We knew she'd been nominated. Hell, there's always a couple genuine talents nominated. We stopped paying attention decades ago. But then your editor asks what you think of Esperanza Spalding winning that Grammy. Uhhhh ... well, she deserved it, because she really is that good.
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Esperanza Spalding is cool. She's beautiful, yes, and has the best hair since Angela Davis. She has quite the voice, sweet, kinda earthy, and fans of jazz, funk, rock, groove and all those college kids can each identify with that voice. Dudes dig it, chicks dig it. She plays — get this — a big old stand-up bass. She dominates it. She may look the waif, but she has no trouble with that thing, either moving it around or making it go where she wants musically.
Every time we've seen her it's been with a trio, a badass trio, too: tough drumming, jamming piano, the real all-sinew, no-fat kind of trio. The kind that jams. She gives each plenty of solo space, takes plenty of her own, and the jazz numbers are pure jazz, the real thing. Her poppier material — which, let's be honest, is what she got that Grammy for — is some sweet nu-soul, sort of. It's soulful, and certainly nu enough, but it has that kind of hip, spare vibe they go so crazy for over at KCRW. Kind of like she'd been discovered by David Byrne. And she sings it all like an angel.
Angel, that's the word. Angelic. That's not a jazz thing. You think Billie Holiday and Anita O'Day and you don't think what little angels they were. You didn't find a lot of angels in the neighborhoods jazz came from. Jazz has always liked its women hard and knowing. That's the standard look, the standard image. You can't be angelic and make it as a vocalist in jazz.
But that's precisely the word that popped into our head sitting backstage at the Playboy Jazz Festival watching Spalding deal with the press. She'd just done another great set, the crowd went nuts for her, and her people had bundled her right off the stage to face us. Must have been a hundred reporters.
The salty, hard-bitten atmosphere dissipated instantly and it was almost church. We whispered. Reporters were afraid to ask anything for fear they'd bruise her. She looked so sweet, her voice was so sweet, there was so much innocence there — we all stopped swearing. We knew it wasn't real, that she couldn't actually be a jazz musician and be that innocent. But on that off, off chance that just maybe it was, we lobbed soft questions and she answered them all, eyes sparkling. She sure looked like the future of something. She was too damn talented to win a Grammy, that we knew. But maybe, just maybe, she was on to something. Something big.
On to one special gig (go to laweekly.com, though, for many, many more): Fred Katz is remembered now mostly for his years playing cello and composing with the Chico Hamilton Quintet; you can see him (alongside Eric Dolphy) play for the beatniks in Jazz on a Summer's Day and for the squares in Sweet Smell of Success. Since then he's made all kinds of interesting records, written soundtracks for big studios and Roger Corman, in fact done just about everything. He's over 90 now, but still playing, and the Skirball Museum has set up a living-room sort of concert, with Mr. Katz and his cello, flutist Hyman Katz, bassist Richard Simon and the Flying Pisanos. Music and memories will flow, at 4 p.m. this Sunday, $15.
Pianist Richard Sears is one of those fierce young pianists you see at the Foundry and Blue Whale, exploding with technique and energy and art. Like Austin Peralta, he's been venturing beyond pure jazz and experimenting with all kinds of other things, like the rock, trance and Middle Eastern-sounding grooves on his new Rick. We like it. The band is called Rick, too; they have a furious drummer and a chance-taking saxist named Sam Gendel and they're at the Bootleg Theater (2220 Beverly Blvd., 213-389-3856) on Sunday at 9 p.m. If this sounds like your kind of thing, it probably is.
On Friday tenor Chuck Manning tears it up at Charlie O's, but if you're jonesing for that big B3 sound, then check out Vitello's, when Larry Goldings gets his original Organ Trio (with guitarist Peter Bernstein and drummer Bill Stewart) back together on Friday and Saturday (and the Jeff Hamilton Organ Trio is there on Tuesday).
You trombone freaks need to see Ed Neumeister and Bruce Fowler at the Blue Whale on Saturday. Both trombonists have long, diverse histories (Fowler's includes a bunch of Zappa albums), and both are well known for playing what is called creative music — that is, out there — so there'll be plenty of improvised trombone madness, also solid postbop and even a few pieces by Frank Rosolino. Recommended.
