St Louis Shoes

Greg Osby | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 10, 2003)
• Original Release Date: 2003
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Blue Note Records
• ASIN: B00009L52P
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #376,736 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Junkmedia.org Review - Blending tradition with innovation, June 26, 2003

By 

junkmedia (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: St Louis Shoes (Audio CD)

Here saxophonist Greg Osby explores his musical past all the while blazing a new path. Sounds like a cliché? No, this is Osby exploring his past through the multi-faceted lens of his current abilities. Blending tradition and innovation, Greg Osby turns standards on their ends and makes them sound new again.

Refraining from original material and favoring standards is an unusual choice for Osby, who is best known for his early association with the M-Base collective, a sort of pre-acid jazz funk group. Since then Osby has developed a style as dependent on abstracted funk and hip-hop rhythms as it is on non-linear phrasing. Osby's most difficult music sounds almost academic in its execution, but with St. Louis Shoes he seems to have tempered his abstract inclinations with a more melodic sensibility.

Osby and his group take time honored chestnuts, rearrange and reharmonize them, add metric rhythm shifts and then solo through them as though they were newly written tunes, all while keeping the original spirit of the pieces. Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, W.C. Handy and even Jack Dejohnette all get composer credit on this session.

Though the music ranges from esoteric to overexposed, all of the pieces feel fresh again. The album opener, Ellington's "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo" gets progressively more complex as the band goes through the changes, sounding more modernistic with each repetition of the theme. Although still recognizable as an Ellington piece by it finale, Osby puts his own personal stamp on it, reminding you just who's playing who here.

While not as obviously challenging as his previous release, Inner Circle, this disc has the added bonus of showcasing former young lion trumpet prodigy Nicholas Payton in a much more interesting role, that of creative improvisor (as opposed to his previous role as Wynton Marsalis' tool). St Louis Shoes is Greg Osby sneaking through the mainstream -- catch him if you can.

Troy Collins

Junkmedia.org Review

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Osby deconstruction!, June 26, 2003

By 

Dr.D.Treharne (Exeter, Devon, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: St Louis Shoes (Audio CD)

It was a brave decision by Osby to take so many well known tunes and make them his own. The success of the project owes as much to the band, as it does to Osby. Nicholas Peyton proves to be an excellent foil for Osby's eclectic style, and Harold O'Neil on piano is given acres of space to develop his own take on the programme. The rhythm section is tight, with Green on drums proving he can be both propulsive and supportive. Some of the tunes are barely recognisable as compositions that you may have heard before, whilst others are given the lightest of makeovers. My favourite tracks are two Ellington tracks, one early period "East St Louis Toodle-oo" and the much later "The Single petal of a rose". Both have wonderful contributions from both the frontmen who spur each other on to deliver greater depths of sound. However, perhaps bettering both of these is a magnificent version of Cassandra Wilson's "Whirlwind Soldier" transformed into something completely different from her version.There's not a track on this album that isn't transformed by the ensemble collected here, and it would be interesting to know what Thelonious Monk might have made of the version of "Light Blue". This album might not be what you might have expected given the track listing.It's an album that will certainly deliver more layers with repeated listening, and is highly recommended.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Blending tradition with innovation., August 18, 2004

By 

Troy Collins (Lancaster, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: St Louis Shoes (Audio CD)

Here saxophonist Greg Osby explores his musical past all the while blazing a new path. Sounds like a cliché? No, this is Osby exploring his past through the multi-faceted lens of his current abilities. Blending tradition and innovation, Greg Osby turns standards on their ends and makes them sound new again.

Refraining from original material and favoring standards is an unusual choice for Osby, who is best known for his early association with the M-Base collective, a sort of pre-acid jazz funk group. Since then Osby has developed a style as dependent on abstracted funk and hip-hop rhythms as it is on non-linear phrasing. Osby's most difficult music sounds almost academic in its execution, but with St. Louis Shoes he seems to have tempered his abstract inclinations with a more melodic sensibility.

Osby and his group take time honored chestnuts, rearrange and reharmonize them, add metric rhythm shifts and then solo through them as though they were newly written tunes, all while keeping the original spirit of the pieces. Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, W.C. Handy and even Jack Dejohnette all get composer credit on this session.

Though the music ranges from esoteric to overexposed, all of the pieces feel fresh again. The album opener, Ellington's "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo" gets progressively more complex as the band goes through the changes, sounding more modernistic with each repetition of the theme. Although still recognizable as an Ellington piece by it finale, Osby puts his own personal stamp on it, reminding you just who's playing who here.

While not as obviously challenging as his previous release, Inner Circle, this disc has the added bonus of showcasing former young lion trumpet prodigy Nicholas Payton in a much more interesting role, that of creative improvisor (as opposed to his previous role as Wynton Marsalis' tool). St Louis Shoes is Greg Osby sneaking through the mainstream -- catch him if you can.

(This review was originally written for the online webzine: junkmedia.org, and was published there June 27, 2003)