Veteran pianist-composer-arranger John Beasley gained invaluable bandstand experience on the road with such revered jazz elders as Freddie Hubbard and Miles Davis while also recording with the likes of Chick Corea, Hubert Laws, and Dianne Reeves along with serving as musical director for Queen Latifah and Steely Dan. In recent years, Beasley has made impressive strides as a bandleader in his own right. On Positootly, his eagerly anticipated follow up to 2008’s acclaimed Letter to Herbie (Beasley’s impressionistic take on the music of Herbie Hancock), the Louisiana native showcases his own engaging compositions along with a few choice covers (Jobim’s “Dindi,” Astor Piazzolla’s “Tanguedia III,” and Bobby Timmons’ “So Tired”).
Joining Beasley on his second outing for Resonance Records are drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts (back from his key role on Letter to Herbie), bassist James Genus, percussionist Munyungo Jackson, Grammy-winning trumpeter Brian Lynch (a former member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and Eddie Palmieri’s salsa band) and saxophonist Benny Maupin (a charter member of Hancock’s Mwandishi Sextet and Headhunters).
A prolific film/tv session player and composer (for Star Trek, Cheers, Family Ties and Fame, as well as such Hollywood box office hits as WALL-E, Finding Nemo, Erin Brockovich, Godfather III, A Bug's Life and Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me), Beasley was also associate musical director for season four of American Idol (the year that produced country music sensation Carrie Underwood) and has been lead arranger season after season. He returns to his first passion composing jazz music, which is heard on the eminently swinging Positootly.
Each tune on this eclectic offering stands like an individual chapter of a book. And the story travels through a myriad of twists and turns along the way with Beasley alternating between modern electric funk and more straight ahead acoustic jazz while putting an exclamation point on the proceedings with an introspective solo piano piece. All of his compositions come from a very personal place, reflecting back on his Louisiana roots while looking forward to modern expressions. “Letter To Herbie was more about arranging, I had fun mashing up Herbie’s songs. In fact, when I was 13 years old, before I really got into playing the piano, I was writing and arranging. I wanted to be like Thad Jones and Quincy Jones writing, arranging, producing, and playing jazz, funk, and pop for records, TV and films, . For this recording, I really wanted to showcase my writing.”
The collection opens with Beasley’s driving, hard boppish “Caddo Bayou,” an (use another word b/c u repeat this word in next sentence) quintet number named for the marshy body of water where he played as a child. An uptempo burner with allusions to Horace Silver’s “Filthy McNasty,” it is fueled by Genus’ irrepressible pulse and Watts’ powerful polyrhythmic approach on the kit and further buoyed by some crisp harmony lines between the horns. Beasley approaches his own solo with a sense of soulful restraint before launching into some dazzling right-handed lines at a breakneck pulse. Lynch follows with a bristling high-note trumpet solo while Maupin maintains the high energy of the piece with a wailing tenor sax solo. And while it may contain some of the edge of New York City, “Caddo Bayou” also carries some of the spirit that was deeply ingrained in Beasley while he was growing up in Shreveport, Louisiana. “I recently went on a trip there with my mom for her 50th high school reunion and saw those old digs again. I haven’t lived there since I was 14, but my feelings for that place are still there. You keep that in you.”
The title track, a buoyantly swinging, highly interactive trio number, features some of Beasley’s most lyrical and uplifting piano playing on the album. “And even though it doesn’t have a typical Louisiana sound, it has the Louisiana spirit in there,” he explains. “That’s why I named the song Positootly …to give it a little bit more grease to express an absolutely positive vibe.”
Jobim’s “Dindi” is given a new suit of clothes by Beasley’s spirited 5/4 rendering, which is brimming with clever modulation and gorgeous reharmonization. Genus contributes a particularly bracing bass solo on this gentle Brazilian classic. Switching gears from the sublime to the intense, Beasley channels the spirit of Elvin Jones on his frantic, tempo-shifting ode to the late, great drummer, “Black Thunder.” Maupin turns in a crackling tenor solo on the double-time section here while Lynch responds with some heat of his own on trumpet. Beasley adds an angular solo that makes some unconventional intervallic leaps as he cascades across the keys. And Watts ignites the track with his runaway freight train momentum. “He’s such an instinctive and interactive musician,” says Beasley of Watts. “There’s always a conversation going on with him and the feel that he puts up is always the right thing. He totally serves the music but at the same time he just lets it fly.”
An authentic Louisiana spirit comes out in full force on Beasley’s infectiously funky “Sha.tit.ta-boom-boom (Club Desire),” named for a social club in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward that was devasted by Hurricane Katrina. “The tune just kind of came out on its own, and it just has this very Louisiana-ish feel to it,” says Beasley. Watts underscores the funky proceedings with his own Tainish take on a N’awlins street beat while Genus bubbles underneath on upright bass and Beasley tickles the keys with earthy aplomb. Maupin switches to soprano sax here and joins with Beasley on some effervescent unison lines that lend some spice to this Southern gumbo. Beasley takes his time on his piano solo, dipping into the funky pool of N’awlins piano mastery in the process.
Beasley’s stunning recreation of “Tanguedia III” by the Argentine tango master Astor Piazzolla represents one tour-de-force on the album. As he explains, “Piazzolla was a revolutionary because he stirred the tango up so much, but that’s what it takes. Bird did a lot of crazy things with the music too.” Beasley’s version of this challenging chamber piece from Tango: Zero Hour incorporates acoustic piano, some wah-inflected electric piano and strains of organ and is further marked by some radical tempo changes and unconventional modulations along the way. “The jazz police won’t let you speed up or slow down,” he explains, “but this seemed like a great vehicle to experiment with that. I ended up transcribing the whole piece, then gave it to the guys and said, ‘Let’s do something with it.’” Indeed, they put their own stamp on this tango classic.
Beasley’s soulful ballad Elle,” written for his wife, is a kind of gospel-blues quartet number that features Maupin on soprano sax. Beasley’s churchy piano comping sets the tone for this moving track while his emotionally-charged solo here resounds with passionate intensity.
An inspired updating of Bobby Timmons’ soul-jazz anthem “So Tired” (from the Riverside record Soul Time) is handled with a modernist sensibility that deftly straddles the worlds of funk and swing. “That was one of my first desert island discs when I was growing up,” says Beasley. “And that song in particular hooked me on jazz. It’s such a great record. They just hit that day and the rest is history. You can put that record on today and it still sounds fresh.” Genus’ ominous, subharmonic groove on electric bass anchors the track while Beasley explores the funky side of his Fender Rhodes here and Maupin adds some bold tenor work to this hip, groove-oriented remake of a Timmons classic.
“The Eight Winds” is Beasley’s other compositional tour-de-force on Positootly. A challenging, suite-like piece, it traverses different tempos and moods, from a beboppish opening theme to an odd-time Afro-Cuban motif to a burning, Max Roach-ish double time feel. Lynch is featured on muted trumpet throughout this intricate number, whose title refers to a precept of Nichiren Daishonin Buddhism:“Worthy persons deserve to be called so because they are not carried away by the eight winds: prosperity, decline, disgrace, honor, praise, censure, suffering, and pleasure. They are neither elated by prosperity nor grieved by decline. The heavenly gods will surely protect one who is unbending before the eight winds. But if you nurse an unreasonable grudge against your lord, they will not protect you, not for all your prayers.”
The collection closes on an introspective note with the solo piano piece “Hope…Arkansas,” Beasley’s personal reflection on the election of President Obama. As he explains, “Last October, I visited my mom’s birthplace, Hope, Arkansas. It was a month before the election so I decided to wear proudly my Obama pins to see the reaction. We drove from Shreveport to Hope on this little two-lane country backwater road with cotton fields along the way…rural beauty, salt of the earth kind of stuff. And as we’re driving we kept seeing signs of support for Obama. Then we stopped at a Wal-Mart in Hope, a small city with an almost equal racial makeup, where we found an atmosphere of solidarity. Hope in Hope. This song is about what we’ve been through as a nation--reaching across the aisles--and the hope that we must carry to move forward.”
That rich expression, which taps into Beasley’s own past while projecting an optimistic future, culminates what is easily his most potent and personal recording to date.
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