Customer Reviews

One

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As far as the sound of this remastered CD is concerned, I have no complaints. No matter how many times I listen to ONE, it still sounds wonderful to me. I also have a vinyl copy of this album. Now some other people who have this album on vinyl might remember that the original vinyl issue of Bob James' ONE had liner notes. Those liner notes were very informative and should have been reproduced for this remastered CD. Why weren't they? Does anybody else out there have a problem with this? Anyway, I have to give this album one less star than I normally would for reasons that have nothing to do with the music itself. I can only echo the sentiments of other reviewers that have already stated how wonderful this music is.

...because there are some SERIOUS GROOVES on this one. "In The Garden" is a very laid back reinterpretation of Pachelbel's "Canon In D" (and it's the version that I'd want played at my wedding when I find the right one)...but the one that made this for me is "Nautilus", which any hip-hop fan should own because every rapper and his mom has sampled this song at one point or another....most notably Ghostface Killah ("Daytona 500") and Run DMC ("Beats To The Rhyme")...and is a jazz-funk CLASSIC.

I'll tell you right now I don't know anything about jazz. I bought this CD because Nautilus was playing at my record store and I recognized the sample from Daytona 500 (plus that little weird sound from somewhere.) Anyway, the CD is great, and if you don't believe me, ask any of the millions of hip-hop types who have sampled this disc, from Rakim to Ultramag's to DJ Shadow.

This is the first of Bob James' contemporary jazz efforts. The title is somewhat misleading, given the fact that Bob had recorded two trio albums under his own name in the early '60's. During his tenure at CTI, he worked as arranger and sideman to many of that label's top artists. With ONE, he was thrust into the spotlight. "Valley Of The Shadows" has a macabre feel to it (its ending using "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God"). "In The Garden" is an elegant, "down home" version of the Pachelbel Canon. "Soulero" features fellow CTI labelmate Grover Washington, Jr., and an organlike Rhodes solo reminiscent of Johnny Hammond. "A Night On Bald Mountain" is pure hard-driven funk. The big hit is his rendition of "Feel Like Makin' Love", which uses the same rhythm section as Roberta Flack's version. ONE closes with the floaty yet earthbound "Nautilus". Kudos to ONE and the many excellent albums to follow!

I've been playing jazz since I was in junior high, and i've heard about Bob James a lot. I even had to do a report on him in high school, but when I heard the tunes on this album, it blew me away. "In the Garden," is an adaptation of Pachabel's 'Canon in D' for string quartet. And Bob James plays it with this funky, bluesy, almost country-western feel. "Night on Bald Mountain" is an onslaught of Dirty funk intersected with classically ornamented brass passages and the icing on the cake is the 'screaming' effect with the trumpets and horns. I could go on and on about ALL of the tunes on this album, but you just need to hear it for yourself. If there are two songs I would listen to as a preview, it would be the two I mentioned above, "Night on Bald Mountain" and "In the Garden". you ne the judge.

Bob James had already had records out (in a standard acoustic jazz format) many years before this came out but for all intents and purposes this is the beginning of the Bob James solo career most people will remember. James had a nice little nitche for himself producing and arranging albums during the early 70's on CTI with everyone from Freddie Hubbard to Grover Washington Jr and it only seemed a matter of time before he branched out and began making records of his own. In fact many of these people among them Grover himself,Idris Mohammad and Thad Jones all return the favor by being happily active participants on this album. This album has some of the hallmarks of James' sound of this era such as strong string arrangements and his understated way on the fender rhodes. On the other hand no one is going to mistaken this album for Lucky Seven for example. At this particular point in his career Bob James was operating during the earlier years of the 70's jazz-funk era and therefore was making music that was a lot more eclectic and broad in scope in terms of arrangements than one might normally associate with him. This would gradually diminish as the decade wore on but when this and his next few albums came out in the mid 70's would embrace that style to a pretty big extent. "Valley Of The Shadows" gets the album off to a great start with a 9 minute song called "Valley Of The Shadows"-a very discordant,minor chorded and somewhat avante garde type of groove where Bob's gift for traditional melody doesn't show up until the conclusion of the songs. "In The Garden" is a traditional arrangement that has a unique sounding mixture of jazz-funk fusion with a country slide guitar sound. Two more originals in "Soulero","Nautilus" and a version of "Feel Like Making Love" are getting a little more into standard Bob James style and even these songs have longer improvisational solos than one might expect. Another major highlite is of course "Night On Bald Mountain" which transforms the Moussorgsky classic into this funky groove with some really deep beats,similar in tone but somewhat more dramatic than what Deodato had famously done to the "Theme From 2001". Taken as a whole I rank this album in the same general arena as Head Hunters or Bitches Brew in terms of it's place in innovating a certain variety of jazz-funk and it's pretty likely this album is somewhat overlooked,as are many such recordings in the same arena.

I HAVE BEEN A FAN OF HIS SINCE I HEARD THIS CD WHICH WAS A VINYL RECORD ALBUM WHEN IT WAS FIRST RELEASED IN 1974.HIS MIX OF JAZZ AND ORCHESTRA MUSIC WAS MIND BLOWING AND TIMELESS.MUST HAVE IN ANY JAZZ COLLECTION.HIS TWO CD IS AS GOOD

This album is absolutely essential.... something; jazz... pop... fusion... funk.... What...? Not sure. Let's just say it's essential to persons who just like good music. "One" crosses so many genre that, in my humble opinion, it can't really be catagorized. For that reason, newer Bob James fans who likely started with his later "smooth jazz" albums should be warned: This is not what you are expecting. Recorded in the early to mid-70s, it carries that decade's unmistakable stamp. Nowhere do you hear a real piano. At this stage in his career, Mr. James preferred the now dated-sounding electric piano. That combined with orchestration that resembles early-70's cop-show soundtracks and disco-inflected rhythms results in an atmosphere where you can almost smell the wood paneling and feel the plastic, amber-colored translucent room-dividers under your fingertips. (You know; the ones with the circle patterns etched in them?) But I digress....
I make fun; however, this does not mean this is bad music, though admittedly dated. Some critics like to say that "One" is not more than pleasant background music. Can they really have listened to this? Try playing "One" for atmosphere the next time you have friends over for a quiet dinner. As soon as the eerie, almost "Bitches Brew"-style acid-jazz of the complex, mood-changing, volume-shifting "Valley of the Shadows" comes out of your speakers like some beast stalking it's prey, your company will likely get annoyed. Then it shifts into the airy "In the Garden", one of the two tracks on here which actually is smooth jazz, and comes back to the funky jam-fest of "Soulero." Then, we're jarred awake again by the blaring intro to James' interpretation of "Night On Bald Mountain" before finally coming back to the cool, relaxing "Feel Like Making Love" and the funky fusion classic "Nautilus." No, this is active listening music for people who don't just like music for atmosphere, but like to submerge themselves in it. People who love avante garde jazz, fusion or progressive music from this era will all probably be able to acquire a taste for "One," and probably its slighly less dynamic sequel "Two." And once they do after several listens, they'll probably find it has become one of their favorites, maybe even a desert island disc. All you have to do is consider it from the perspective of the period in which it was produced; with that out of the way, the value of "One" as good music becomes more than apparent.

This offering, James' first with CTI, is the first of his epic series of releases that follows an arc from traditional jazz to hard funk to refined cool jazz to his steady and continuing decline into insipid smoothness.

I would classify the tracks here as "raw," lacking the soloist strength of "Two" or "Three" and with arrangements that are somewhat crude in comparison to later adaptations. However, therein lies the charm of this album- one can imagine a young, fiery, pre-beard Bob James smashing away at a keyboard in a little studio crammed with the powerful sounds of the massive orchestration heard here.

Although he had had some success dating back to the early 1960s, keyboardist and arranger Bob James really came into his own during the jazz-pop explosion of the early 1970s while on the CTI label, the label run by jazz aficionado Creed Taylor that also gave us Eumir Deodato. James' 1974 album ONE is a fine example of his talents.

Although there are only six tracks on ONE, this is a minor drawback, because what IS on there is very intricately done. "Valley Of The Shadows" has a positively dramatic and intense opening, with its closing measures utilizing, as a past reviewer has mentioned, the celebrated Lutheran chorale "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." "Soulero" is James' own variation on Maurice Ravel's celebrated "Bolero", but not an actual adaptation of it, only utilizing certain aspects of the Ravel piece; and "Nautilus" is eerie jazz-funk whose title obviously brings to mind the memory of Jules Verne. There's also his take on Roberta Flack's hit "Feel Like Making Love", and a chillingly massive version of Moussorgsky's celebrated nightmare piece "Night On Bald Mountain." The most unusual track on ONE is "In The Garden." Utilizing Hugh McCracken on harmonica and Eric Weissberg on pedal steel, James comes up with a somewhat C&W-inspired version of Johann Pachelbel's celebrated "Canon In D Major"; the familiar melody of the Canon can be heard in the background performed by the string section, against James' unusual arrangement.

James would continue to expand his talents and success in the jazz-pop and "smooth jazz" fields over the ensuing quarter century; and while his may not have been blockbuster hits, he certainly came up with more than a few gems in his time. ONE was the true beginning of a remarkable career.