Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Buck Hill: Relax

403

Buck Hill: Relax

By

View read count
Buck Hill: Relax
Relax has an old-school feeling, like a Blue Note album from the sixties. It's a straight-ahead sound, with Buck Hill's brawny, relaxed tenor saxophone in the embrace of a fine organ trio. I compare it to an "album" in part because there's a two-sided feeling to the eight songs.

"Side one" opens with a with the Hill-penned "RH Blues," a fresh-sounding up-tempo romp featuring a fluidly stinging guitar solo by Paul Pieper, followed by John Ozment's rippling Hammond work and some truly exquisite blowing from Hill. "Relax," another original, tells you that Buck Hill doesn't waste a single note. There's no flash to his style, no wailing histrionics—this is just first-rate jazz, from a master who has spent sixty years honing his craft. The first four tunes of this "side" are rounded out by the Amercian Songbook tune "Old Folks" and another Hill tune, "Little Bossa," for a top-notch opening salvo.

"Side two" is where Hill takes us from an excellent jazz outing into the realm of classic listening experience. The first three tunes here could be called the "Miles Davis Suite": "Flamenco Sketches," "Prancing" [sic] and "Milestones." The lushly orchestrated Davis/Gil Evans collaboration Sketches of Spain (Columbia, 1959) produced the original "Flamenco Sketches." Buck Hill and his backing trio distill the tune down to its elemental beauty, opening with a shimmer on Paul Pieper's guitar before swirling into some of the most cohesive group interplay I've heard in a good long while. It combines reverence with soul-searching honesty—a masterpiece! "Francing" and "Milestone" get similar treaments.

When you listen to current jazz artists, you'll find an amazing amount of talent out there, but it's rare to find a disc that can stand with the classics of yesteryear, including sets by the likes of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon and Joe Henderson. Relax, Buck Hill's first album as a leader in fifteen years, is such a disc.

Welcome back to the recording studio, Mr. Hill. You've created a classic.

Track Listing

RH Blues; Old Folks; Little Bossa; Flamenco Sketches; Prancing; Milestones; Sad Ones.

Personnel

Buck Hill
saxophone, tenor

Buck Hill: tenor saxophone; John Ozment: Hammond A100; Paul Pieper: guitar; Jerry Jones: drums.

Album information

Title: Relax | Year Released: 2006 | Record Label: Severn 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.

More

Eternal Moments
Yoko Yates
From "The Hellhole"
Marshall Crenshaw
Tramonto
John Taylor

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.