Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » The Sheryl Bailey 3: Live @ The Fat Cat

335

The Sheryl Bailey 3: Live @ The Fat Cat

By

View read count
The Sheryl Bailey 3: Live @ The Fat Cat
At home in many musical milieus, Sheryl Bailey's guitar speaks both viscerally and cerebrally. Of late, she has been most comfortable in her Hammond B3 trio with organist Gary Versace and drummer Ian Froman. Live versions of songs from their two initial studio releases make up only roughly a third of Live @ The Fat Cat, which captures the band over two nights at the Greenwich Village club. This latest chronicle reveals that the group has matured to a point where Bailey's incredible guitar technique is skillfully interwoven into the trio's overall sound.

Although the band begins to cook early, with Bailey shooting sparks from her guitar about two minutes into the opening "Cedar's Mood, a tribute to the great hard bop pianist Cedar Walton, there is a lovely patina to each of these cuts. Versace's ebb and flow, combined with Froman's textural playing, gives the music a profound richness, and the tributes to Coltrane's spirit, "Starbrite and "Elvin People, are even more devotional live.

Bailey's singularity as a guitarist lies with her lethal combination of blistering leads and captivating chords, and happily both are in evidence here. The new material is very strong: the beautifully unhurried tension building "A Soft Green Light, the chordal explorations of "Dance of the Dream Maker and "Tune Down, and the ethereal tribute to klezmer clarinetist David Krakauer, "The Wishing Well. "Midnite Swim is a late-night bath in juicy B3 sound, and everyone's favorite bop-rocker, "Swamp Thang, arises again from the mire for a wall-shaking and window-rattling conclusion. If you have never heard this group, Live @ The Fat Cat is a great intro to the best working B3 trio around.

Track Listing

Cedar's Mood; A Soft Green Light; Starbrite; Elvin People; Dance of the Dream Maker; Tune Down; The Wishing Well; Midnite Swim; Swamp Thang.

Personnel

Sheryl Bailey: guitar/pen; Gary Versace: Hammond B3; Ian Froman: drums.

Album information

Title: Live @ The Fat Cat | Year Released: 2006 | Record Label: PureMusic Records

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.

Near

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.