| Roy Hargrove - The Vibe
(1992)
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| Notes |
_Reviewer: A music fan from Pittsfield, MA United States
I stumbled across Roy Hargrove at the Notre Dame Jazz Festival in 1995 and instantly bought up all of his records. This one is by far my favorite.
There truly is something to suit all tastes in jazz on this record. "...Booty Green's" offers a raw, meaty-lip sounding trumpet in perfect accusation phrasings of the blues. "Milestones" and "The Vibe" are solid straight-ahead bop pieces with a nice middle-of-the-road tempo and activity. Milestones, in particular, has a nice juxtaposition of neat-choppy phrasing with long slurred bop lines. In "Caryisms" a smoothe groove is laid down and repeats while Hargrove's trumpet adds the perfect amount of depth and complexity over the top of it.
If you like up-tempo bop, then "The Thang" is your thing. But my two favorite tracks are the lyrical ballads "Where Were You" and "Things We Did Last Summer" where Roy's warm, open sound (similar to Wynton Marsalis) perfectly suits the lush, romantic phrasing. In "Where Were You" Hargrove builds the intensity of the ballad to finish with some of my favorite bop lines of all time.
If you like trumpet jazz, you should definitely give this CD a try.
AMG Review (4):
The last of trumpeter Roy Hargrove's recordings to feature his longtime altoist Antonio Hart also includes pianist Marc Cary, bassist Rodney Whitaker, drummer Gregory Hutchinson and guest spots for the tenors of Branford Marsalis and David "Fathead" Newman, plus trombonist Frank Lacy and organist Jack McDuff. Hargrove (still just 22) was already on his way to being one of the better hard bop-based trumpeters in jazz, as he shows on group originals, James Williams' "Alter Ego," Wayne Shorter's "Pinocchio," "Milestones," and "The Things We Did Last Summer." A fine example of Hargrove's rapidly emerging style. — Scott Yanow |
