Customer Reviews

Movin Along

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

 

 

As Wes Montgomery's biographer Adrian Ingram has written, 1960 "was a very good year for Wes." He recorded six albums that year, two under his own leadership, and one each with Nat Adderley, Harold Land, Cannonball Adderley, and with his brothers under the collective name The Montgomery Brothers, all on the Riverside or Fantasy label. All the albums were critical successes and Wes went on to win Downbeat's New Star award for the year. A good year indeed!

MOVIN' ALONG was made in October, 10 months after the incredible INCREDIBLE JAZZ GUITAR session, and was a West Coast date. James Clay appears on tenor and flute and Victor Feldman is on piano (Sam Jones [b] and Louis Hayes [d] round out the rhythm section). Everyone is in good form.

The title track is a slow blues written by Wes, and contains a haunting guitar solo; Clifford Brown's SANDU, also a blues, done in medium tempo, is a classy tune done up nicely. TUNE-UP and BODY AND SOUL come in two different takes, the alternate take of the latter being a full 4 minutes longer than the originally issued take.

The highlight for me is SO DO IT!, a Montgomery original, a tune I woke up to every morning at 7 am, as did many jazz fans in the NYC area in the 1960s, it being the opening theme song to Ed Beach's JUST JAZZ program on WRVR. It's a great tune and has wonderful playing by everyone. My only complaint with this album is the miking of James Clay: often he sounds as if he was recording from inside a closet. Other than that, it's a great CD, definitely worth checking out.

The liner notes for "Movin' Along", like so many other liner notes, heap a lot of praise on this album, saying it's the best studio album by Wes Montgomery (at the time the album came out, obviously). Unfortunately, the album doesn't live up to that promise. The title track starts with some hesitant flute playing by James Clay. "Tune Up" is much better. The bands swings at a lively pace. "I Don't Stand A Ghost Of A Chance" doesn't quite live up to Wes' potential. "Sandu" is another swinger a la "Tune Up". The "Body And Soul" version is pretty good, Wes plays with a lot of taste. "So Do It!" has a riff that sounds like a cousin of "Sandu". "Says You" ends the disc on a pretty good note. Wes' guitar playing is better than most guitar players on this CD, but he is not at his personal best. The bigger problem is that I'm not a fan of James Clay's flute & sax work. He doesn't show up on any other jazz albums I've heard, perhaps his contemporaries heard what I'm hearing.

This disc has its charms, but ultimately it's a notch below CD's like "The Wes Montgomery Trio", "Boss Guitar", "Full House", and of course "The Incredible Jazz Guitar".

Jazz guitarist extraordinare Wes Montgomery's third album as a leader, "Movin' Along," was recorded for the Riverside label on October 12, 1960. It features an incredible lineup of James Clay on flute and tenor sax, and the rhythm trio of Victor Feldman on piano, Sam Jones on bass and Louis Hayes on drums (who also partnered on some slammin' Cannonball Adderley discs). While Wes can certainly hold his own with just a trio (as he does beautifully on "The Incredible Jazz Guitarist," "Groove Yard" and "Smokin' at the Half Note"), I personally find his recordings with sax added to the frontline even more compelling. As a result, "Movin' Along," along with "Full House," will always be my favorite Wes albums. Now, if they could only find some decent recordings of the short-lived partnership of Wes with Coltrane!

"Movin' Along" is a mixed bag. I have no problem with the miking of James Clay's flute, and he's good. His sax is a little low in the mix when he's riffing with Wes, but otherwise it's fine. He's not a smokin' tenor and should have stayed with the flute on this date. Victor Feldman (piano), Sam Jones (bass), and Louis Hayes (drums) are a great support group. Feldman is a standout.

The real problem is the song selection. Some of these tunes weren't good vehicles for Wes. The up tempo stuff works better. And I prefer that alternate takes are lumped at the end of the disc, rather than paired with the master takes.

But it's Riverside Wes Montgomery, and his fans will want it. Enjoy it for the numbers that do work, and hit Skip on the remote for the ones that don't.

Paired with Cannonball Adderley's working sidemen of the time plus an obscure but sensitive flutist/saxophonist, Wes Montgomery's third album finds the singular guitarist veering comfortably between loping blues (the leadoff title track), remade standard ballads ("I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance With You," "Body and Soul," the latter offered in two equally fascinating and affecting takes), and jazz bristlers (Clifford Brown's memorable "Sandu," Miles Davis's rippling "Tune Up," and Montgomery's own "So Do It!" - it's easy to forget, thanks to his impeccable guitar playing, that Montgomery was also an above-average composer in his own right) and never once feeling out of place with any of them. The contrasts between Montgomery's guitar and James Clay's flute work are striking; the guitarist knitted as neatly with the Adderley rhythm section - pianist Victor Feldman, bassist Sam Jones, drummer Louis Hayes - as he did with his own legendary guitar-organ-drums trio, and they in turn seem completely at ease working with the easygoing guitarist. (Feldman, especially, sounds unpressured and relaxed, without compromising feeling or tonal subtlety.) And, Montgomery's trademarks (the smooth chords and octaves, the sleek but supple single-note lines) are enhanced by occasional playings on the high end of a (presumably six-string) bass guitar's strings (note, especially, "Sandu") that isn't as out of place as it might seem, to those more familiar with Montgomery's usual soft-toned delivery on his guitar's own lower strings.

Considering the critical hosannas and poll conquests which poured upon his first two albums ("The Wes Montgomery Trio" and "The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery"), it might have been understandable if the guitarist had had a difficult, if not impossible time following up. From the sound of "Movin' Along" (this title, by the way, was erroneously affixed to a track on his later "Portrait of Wes" when originally issued; it's since been corrected to "Blues Riff"), which seems to have been intended as a purely jamming date (and sounds as breezy, even in the ballads, as you'd expect in such an atmosphere), anyway, following up was anything but a problem for Wes Montgomery.