Riding on the popularity of its late mentor, a new jazz group's low profile may be about to get higher. A year or so before he died early this year, pianist George Shearing gave his blessing to vibraharpist Charlie Shoemake's idea of forming a living tribute to Shearing's quintet, for decades one of the most successful of all small jazz bands. The resulting combo, featuring Shoemake and other veterans of the Shearing quintet, has been playing concerts, clubs, festivals and jazz parties in California and is planning a tour. They will make a foray into the Pacific Northwest early next year and, if audience attendance and reaction is favorable, develop a series of bookings across the country.
The other members of the group, named The Sounds of Shearing, are guitarist Ron Anthony, drummer Colin Bailey, bassist Luther Hughes, and on Shearing's piano bench the young Los Angeles veteran Joe Bagg. Like Shoemake, Anthony and Bailey toured and recorded extensively with Shearing in the 1960s and 70s. Hughes, one of the busiest bassists on the west coast, leads the band called The Cannonball Coltrane Project.
The deceptive simplicity of the Shearing sound was largely built around unison lines played by guitar and vibes and undergirded by the harmonic complexities of Shearing's piano. “I had great admiration for him," Shoemake told me following Shearing's death. “Harmonically, I don't think that he had any peers; he was as brilliant as anybody I ever met. His touch and his voicings and his chord substitutions on songs were from the heavens. Bill Evans, of course, was very influenced by way he used block chords. Bill very openly admitted that he'd learned a lot of that from Shearing. With George, I went from being an anonymous studio musician to someone sort of well known as a jazz vibes player. All the guys who played for him loved him."
Here are Shoemake, Anthony, Bagg, Hughes and Bailey—The Sounds of Shearing—at The Hamlet in Cambria, California, with one of the best-known of Shearing's string of hits from the days when jazz hits still happened.
The other members of the group, named The Sounds of Shearing, are guitarist Ron Anthony, drummer Colin Bailey, bassist Luther Hughes, and on Shearing's piano bench the young Los Angeles veteran Joe Bagg. Like Shoemake, Anthony and Bailey toured and recorded extensively with Shearing in the 1960s and 70s. Hughes, one of the busiest bassists on the west coast, leads the band called The Cannonball Coltrane Project.
The deceptive simplicity of the Shearing sound was largely built around unison lines played by guitar and vibes and undergirded by the harmonic complexities of Shearing's piano. “I had great admiration for him," Shoemake told me following Shearing's death. “Harmonically, I don't think that he had any peers; he was as brilliant as anybody I ever met. His touch and his voicings and his chord substitutions on songs were from the heavens. Bill Evans, of course, was very influenced by way he used block chords. Bill very openly admitted that he'd learned a lot of that from Shearing. With George, I went from being an anonymous studio musician to someone sort of well known as a jazz vibes player. All the guys who played for him loved him."
Here are Shoemake, Anthony, Bagg, Hughes and Bailey—The Sounds of Shearing—at The Hamlet in Cambria, California, with one of the best-known of Shearing's string of hits from the days when jazz hits still happened.
