4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
"Soul Finger" Is Thumbs Down, October 17, 2009
This review is from: Soul Finger (Dig) (Audio CD)
Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers' Blue Note albums are some of the best items in that famous catalog, with 1964's "Free for All" and "Indestructible" two of the finest. "Soul Finger" finds the Messengers a year later and after a label change, to Limelight, now part of Verve on CD. Old friends Freddie Hubbard and Lee Morgan drop by, even though they are both leading their own bands at this juncture, but the rest of Art's men are new to the fold -- Lucky Thompson on tenor and soprano sax, John Hicks on piano and Victor Sproles on bass. Right off the bat, you can hear the chemistry is missing. The rhythm duo contribute as if Art was Jimmy Smith on organ, adding only steady, redundant themes so not to crowd the master drummer. And Lucky needs more than luck to be counted in the same league as two such formidable trumpeters. But you wouldn't even know it was Freddie, Lee and Art if the jacket didn't say so because the studio sound is so poorly conceived and captured, that their best quailities rarely shine through. Instead of the bright, sharp interplay of Lee or Freddie with Curtis Fuller and Wayne Shorter on the Blue Notes, here we get an uninspired drone-like sound from this musical malaise. Art's drum mic-ing suffers similarly, with the bass drum in particular yielding an unpleasant thud, often out of time with his stickwork. And the simplistic original compositions, two of which are latin-tinged numbers that sound identical, left me yearning for Shorter's creative pen. Compared to the magic of "Mosaic" and "Buhaina's Delight," "Soul Finger" is strictly thumbs down.
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