The first time I heard Jimmy Cobb play live, I underestimated him.This was entirely my fault, and it demonstrates the peril of thinking you’re hip to an artist after studying only one phase of his/her development. At age 83, Cobb’s the only one left alive of the seven men who play on Miles Davis’ “Kind Of Blue,” released in 1959 and considered by many critics the finest and most influential jazz album ever released. It’s also one of the best-selling albums in jazz history, certified quadruple-platinum as of 2008.
So I love “Kind Of Blue” and think you should too, but I took Cobb for granted, at the bottom of the mix under Miles himself, Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane on saxes, Bill Evans (replaced by Wynton Kelly on one cut) on piano, and Paul Chambers on bass. I said, “OK, drummer, holds it together, nice…”
But oh, so much deeper than nice. I probably had Cobb underrated from my very start with him (“Kind Of Blue”) but I sure wasn’t ready for his show last year at Jazz Alley, alongside Miles alumni Buster Williams, Sonny Fortune, and Mike Stern. Cobb took some epochal solos, but the mark of a truly great drummer, I think, is his/her ability to shine without solos. Cobb’s ride cymbal told stories, his snare snickered in side commentary, and his majesty at knowing exactly what to put in and what to leave out, interlocked and rolled fluidly with everyone else.
The drummer isn’t bringing back his Miles compatriots this time at Jazz Alley (Aug. 30-Sept. 2) but his new ensemble’s equally fascinating for different reason. Billed as “a Tribute to Jimmy Smith and Wes Montgomery,” the bill includes Joey DeFrancesco (another Miles veteran) on organ and Larry Coryell on guitar, “filling in” for Smith and Montgomery, respectively. And while they don’t play quite like the latter-mentioned, that’s for the better, since a righteous tribute must involve invocation without imitation—a principle misunderstood by too many well-intentioned tributeers.
The wonderful wild card in the deck: Singer Roberta Gambarini. Originally from Italy, she throws herself willfully around standards with a confident, idiosyncratic style of scat-singing and a knack for new phrasings, pushing and pulling against tempos, that mark her as an emerging master. I cannot say how these four will talk, so to speak, amongst each other, on stage. I do urge it on you, though. Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley is at 2033 Sixth Ave.
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