Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Billy Martin's Wicked Knee: Heels Over Head

1

Billy Martin's Wicked Knee: Heels Over Head

By

View read count
Billy Martin's Wicked Knee: Heels Over Head
What if drummer Billy Martin of the late-20th, now 21st-century band Medeski Martin and Wood had been born at the end of the 19th century in New Orleans? What kind of music would he play? Certainly, it would have a brass band setting and be inflected with blues feel. Invite Buddy Bolden over tonight, because we have some funky ragtime sound with Martin's new outfit Wicked Knee. This their first full-length release, that follows the EP Wicked Knee (Amulet, 2011).

Covering King Oliver's "Sugarfoot Stomp," Martin's brass band of trumpeter Steven Bernstein (Millennium Territory Orchestra, Sexmob), Curtis Fowlkes (trombone), and Marcus Rojas (tuba) sounds all-at-once old timey and wink-and-a-grin modern. The drummer's shuffle underscores the practical neatness of Bernstein and Rojas' solos, packaged to fit within the three minutes and forty-two seconds of recording space. What is old, is neither dusty, nor stodgy. Martin brings his love of groove to a brass band setting. His "Mbwemofolo" is an invitation to dance and the hypnotic "Chaman's Interlude" vibrates with enough of Rojas' low-end bass to rattle any pimp mobile.

Wicked Knee draws from the slick urbane and irreverent arrangements of Bernstein and loose feel of Martin's drumming. They can swoop from the mariachi ranchero song "Canta y No Llores" to The White Stripes' "Button To Button" hop, skipping, and jumping between cultures and genres without losing their dynamism. The band and the music is centered in the brass band tradition with songs like the über-funky "Muffaletta" and "99%"—the latter written and sung by Shelley Hirsch as a modern version of "St. James Infirmary." For Martin and Wicked Knee, everything old is undoubtedly old and at the same time very new again.

Track Listing

Ghumba Zumba; Theme One; Button to Button; Rendezvous; 99%; Muffaletta; Sugarfoot Stomp; Chaman's Interlude; Canta y No Llores; Mbwemofolo; Noctiluca.

Personnel

Billy Martin: drums, percussion, waterphone; Steven Bernstein: trumpet, slide trumpet; Curtis Fowlkes: trombone; Marcus Rojas: tuba; Shelley Hirsch: vocals (5).

Album information

Title: Heels Over Head | Year Released: 2013 | Record Label: Amulet

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.