John Scofield & Dave Holland: Memories Of Home

John Scofield and Dave Holland have about a century of combined experience making jazz. They have played with everybody and created deep bodies of work that span bebop to today. "Memories of Home" sounds like an intimate reflection on two musical lives.

Scofield and Holland each spent time with Miles Davis' band. They played together with Herbie Hancock and others, but Memories of Home is their first duo album. Scofield said, "I honestly don't recall when or how we first discussed playing duo together. It was quite a while ago and we had an entire tour scheduled that was scrapped in 2020 due to the pandemic. We did it in late 2021 and it worked well. We did a second tour in 2024 and the idea of recording was a natural conclusion. The record, like our live shows, features tunes each of us composed, some new, some old. We share decades of common references musically. The similarities and differences in our approaches make for a more interesting collaboration, I think."

Miles features in "Icons at the Fair," a variation on Herbie Hancock's arrangement of "Scarborough Fair," from The New Standard (1996) on which Scofield and Holland both appeared.

Hancock, Scofield, and Michael Brecker original solos are replaced on "Icons At The Fair" with a musical dialogue that retains the harmonic and rhythmic complexity of Hancock's arrangement but bears little resemblance to Simon and Garfunkel's classic song. "Meant To Be" is one of John Scofield's most performed songs, from his eponymous 1991 homage to Ornette Coleman. The original recording's offbeat percussion is replaced with Holland's rich bass tones and Scofield's octave runs.

Scofield first recorded the ballad "Easy for You" in 1993 for The John Scofield Quartet's What We Do album. Holland's rich, lyrical bass adds a wistful layer in a minimalist reinterpretation. New composition "Mine Are Blues" is followed by "Memorette" from Scofield's 2007 This Meets That (EmArcy) features Holland in a waltzing reinterpretation of Steve Swallow's original.

"Mr. B" is Holland's homage to Ray Brown, the inspiration to take up the double bass, first recorded in 1997. It is followed by the title track (below), also written by Holland, from an out-of-print, self-titled bluegrass recording with Vassar Clements and John Hartford (1985).

"Memories of Home" is one of the best tracks, as Holland adds jazz inflections to the bluegrass song he wrote nearly five decades ago. Scofield echoes the original recording's banjo while sounding very much like himself.

Guitar/bass duets have a noble pedigree in jazz history, including Jim Hall and Charlie Haden's Haden & Hall (Impulse! Records, 1990) recorded at the Montreal Jazz Festival, and Haden and Pat Metheny Beyond the Missouri Sky (Verve Music Group, 1996).

"Memories Of Home" is a welcome addition to the guitar/bass canon. It finds two legendary jazz musicians at the height of their powers reflecting on the decades of music behind them. Past compositions are stripped down to their essence and reinterpreted by the passage of time. The result is at once starkly minimalist and musically rich.