Customer Reviews

Cure All

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If your concept of "Jazz Rock" is something like Mahavishnu or Chick Corea, this album will open your ears! This is jazz-rock with as much Doctor John and Booker T as John Coltrane. The trio swings, growls, slides and crawls like a hip alligator. On the last track, "T", Walter switches to a traditional Jazz trio and shows "Real Jazz Pianist" credentials, but most of the album (like the rollicking version of "Rivers of Babylon") has a playfulness that one doesn't hear in Jazz as much as one should.

Amazon's pairing of this album with "Dance like there's no tomorrow" is perfect. Sometimes I listen to Jazz to concentrate, or to feed my love of abstract beauty. I listen to this for sheer pleasure: It just makes me feel good!

This album is unlike some of Walter's previous releases, but I like it. It is much more demure and reserved than his earlier offerings. I especially enjoy some of the back and forth between tracks where one track he will play the hammond and the subsequent track will include the piano. The inclusion of John Singleton and Johnny Vidacovich - two renowned musicians from New Orleans' Astral Project - culminates in a less is more sound with this fantastic trio.

I've followed Robert Walter since the early 2000s and heard him live three times. Back when lots of jam bands were touring, he was my favorite. His ability to mix gospel with rock with jazz with old-school funk is just amazing.
I always felt his songwriting was interesting but sparse, especially with the earlier albums..great at ideas, but now and then kindof short on development. With Cure All there are only a couple of tunes, though, that would fall into this category. He's improved in that regard.
And he's definitely just gotten better and better through the years when it comes to making his points when he's given the chance to let it rip on a solo.
This album just has me rooting for him even more and so glad that he's still jammin'.

I thought I was buying a blues Organist, this is the farthest out stuff I have heard in a long time. Out there in the stratosphere somewhere. Just nothing like McGriff, Smith, Defrancesco, or any other of the blues organists like Monaco, Groove Holmes or Billy Preston. This CD is too far out for me, and no soul, bad on me. I am sure those that like this guy think he is a wonderful artist, just not my cup of tea.