And Still I Rise

Like essentially all American music, jazz is rooted in the blues, and plenty of musicians cross back and forth. Every once in a while, though, somebody comes along and finds a novel way to connect the two. Heritage Blues Orchestra does just that. The group consists of a core trio of Junior Mack, and Bill & Chaney Sims (father and daughter). Junior and Bill play guitar, and all three trade off vocal duties. Along with them are a couple of harmonica players, a percussionist and a four-piece horn section. Reading that, you may be thinking about one of my favorite new groups on the blues scene-- Hazmat Modine. Heritage Blues Orchestra is rather less eclectic and less experimental than Hazmat Modine, though (there are no Tuvan throat singers here...). In contrast to the wild experimentation of that group, Heritage Blues Orchestra have built an album around an idea so simple and so good that it is a wonder that it hasn't really been done before. Take one form of traditional blues-based music, and overlay it on another. The most frequent, and most successful versions of that on this album consist of taking a relatively straight-forward North Mississippi hill country groove, and on top of that, layer a horn section that sounds like it might have been arranged and conducted by Charles Mingus, or may Duke Pearson or Oliver Nelson. What these jazz luminaries had in common as arrangers was an understanding of not just the blues roots of jazz (Mingus even called one of his best albums "Blues & Roots"), but the gospel-blues connection, also heard in players like Roland Kirk and Cannonball Adderley. The trick that someone like Mingus, Pearson or Oliver could pull off is to make the horn arrangement sufficiently rooted in a basic blues rhythm that it could be overlaid on a straight blues band, but to keep enough bop elements in the melodic structure to create the unique contrast that the Heritage Blues Orchestra creates. The result combines the best of country blues with the best of jazz in styles ranging from dixieland to the adventurous blends created by Roland Kirk. Heritage Blues Orchestra finds new and innovative ways to combine different threads of blues, gospel and jazz that seem both logical and surprising.

The material has a lot of what you would expect, including some traditionals and standards. Of course, it takes a lot of courage to tackle C-Line Woman (their chosen spelling) in this context. After all, Nina Simone basically OWNS the song. It had to be particularly intimidating for Chaney Sims to sing this in the shadow of Nina. Honestly, the arrangement is not particularly revelatory. They don't really deviate much from the basic structure of Nina-type arrangement. Bill and Junior echo Chaney over light percussion with some tuba. It is a good piece of music, but given the uniqueness of the rest of the album, it feels a bit too close to some famous arrangements to be truly revelatory.

The rest of the album, though, sounds like nothing else. As I said, I don't know why it has taken this long for somebody to figure out how to put a Mingus-style horn arrangement on top of country blues, but it is a fine idea. The real surprise is the lack of soloing, though. Both blues and jazz musicians frequently play indulgent solos. Frankly, I like indulgent solos, as long as the players are good enough. If you are familiar with Junior Mack's work with Jaimoe, you know that he most definitely is good enough. Bill Sims is no slouch as a guitarist either, but Mack really is a stand-out instrumentalist, and that only shines through in a few places on the album. The horn section is also relatively subdued. The horns aren't really given a chance to play out until the final track, Hard Times. The piece begins as an off-kilter Otis Taylor-type modern blues piece, but then transitions into the horn interlude in an arrangement vaguely reminiscent of Gil Evans. A few of the themes sounded very familiar to me, but I couldn't quite place them. Then, eventually, the piece resolves into a soul jazz workout that David Fathead Newman might have recorded in the 1970's with the horn players given an opportunity to show what they can do. It makes a nice cap to an original and satisfying demonstration of how the different threads of blues-based music from the last nearly-century can be tied together in ways that people still hadn't thought to do before.

Further listening:

Doug Wamble, Country Libations. Wamble is really the only point of comparison here. His first album drew on everything from country blues and gospel to Django Reinhardt to Ornette Coleman. He is a soulful singer, an impressive guitarist and an unusual arranger.

Hazmat Modine. As mentioned above, they use some similar instrumentation, but are far more experimental. Both of their albums are brilliant.

Otis Taylor, Recapturing the Banjo. The album sounds nothing like Heritage Blues Orchestra, but is in a similar spirit in that it brings together different threads of traditional music, specifically in an effort to show a side of the banjo not generally heard (people forget that it is actually of African origin).

Ry Cooder's 1970's albums. Cooder used to use some similar tricks, but he was more apt to take the different elements and put them in a blender rather than to serve them as a mixed salad.

Ollabelle. A good modern take on the intersection of folk, blues and gospel.