Customer Reviews

Song for the New Man

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This is a great album. Newman recorded it when he was 70. My favourite track is "When I Fall in Love". Best listened to with a warm friend and a cool drink.

I was so knocked out by Newman's virtuosic, flawless performance on his Duke Ellington tribute, "Mr. Gentle, Mr. Cool," that I decided to acquire another CD under his leadership. It's a solid and enjoyable session by the great Texas tenor man, especially the two ballads. But the last tune, Mobley's "This I Dig of You," proved to be a miscalculation. It prompted me to return to Mobley's performance of the tune on arguably his greatest album, "Soul Station," a true desert island disc recorded 44 years before "Song for the New Man." Now I know a bit more about the meaning of the overused term "classic," which should be reserved for only those timeless works that have earned the designation.

The difference is not only in Mobley's captivating storytelling and ever-fertile imagination but in the rhythmic flow and "swing." Mobley is cruising the high seas, endlessly spinning out chorus after chorus, each more inventive than the previous one, with much of the credit belonging to a perfectly in-synch crew of Kelly, Chambers and Blakey. Moments like these are always reciprocal--the rhythm section inspires the soloist and vice versa. By contrast, Fathead is faced with fighting his way through slush, lucky to be able to connect two phrases under trying if not laborious circumstances. Nothing seems to be working.

My advice: either ignore the last track on this CD or avoid Mobley's "Soul Station."