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5.0 out of 5 stars
Glad to have him back!, January 21, 2005
This review is from: Glad to Be Back (Audio CD)
Well traveled guitarist Mark Elf returns after a tough struggle with a kidney disorder coupled with prostate cancer with a warm and lively set of standards and originals. Falling somewhere between Barney Kessel, Jimmy Smith, Kenny Burrell, Jimmy Bruno, Pat Martino, Howard Alden, Joe Diorio, and Joshua Breakstone, Elf displays a finely tuned and highly developed bop and hardbop vocabulary, with more than a soupçon of soul jazz thrown in, a legacy from his years laboring in the organ-jazz groups of such masters as Groove Holmes, Jimmy McGriff, Charles Earland, and Lou Donaldson.
This isn't really my normal cup of tea, but I'm entirely taken by this music. There's none of that musty reverence or chops-heavy prefunctoriness (well, it does creep into "Count Spacey," almost a parody of a bop-blues, but we'll forgive him that solitary lapse) one often gets with bop/hardbop sessions. Instead there's a joyful playfulness coupled with absolute technical mastery. The result is music of both integrity and beauty. It helps, of course, to have the killer rhythm section of Peter Washington (bass) and Louis Nash (drums), who first recorded with Elf nearly a decade ago on A Minor Scramble. Throw in pianist David Hazeltine, who absolutely understands this music, and you have the ingredients for something special.
But it's the leader who makes the deepest impression. A very fleet-fingered yet amazingly precise guitarist, he nevertheless manages to infuse his tone with a glow and vitality found only in the greatest practitioners of his instrument. If there's a somewhat traditional bent to his conception and playing, he operates at such a high level that only those who entirely disdain this music will object.
Highly recommended.
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