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Doug MacDonald: Santa Monica Session
ByWhat more can you ask for? Unicorns?
A couple of tracks from the recording can give a listener a nice feel for the project as a whole. Anyone who is a sucker for Sonny Rollins and "Pent Up House" in particular, is going to like this Latin treatment, especially a very curious introduction. Talk about misdirection. MacDonald's solo is especially inventive, and with Bill Cantos' organ chord-comping, free to go most anywhere. And it does, with an exclamation point! The whole thing reaches an arch conclusion, pushed along by Kevin Winard and Hussain Jiffry. How many times can a medium-tempo "Walkin" be persuasive? MacDonald enters his solo with a kind of "let me tell you what this is about" phrase followed by a myriad of quotes, near-quotes and a very different release into the final chorus. "Perdido" as a montuno? Why not? The theme does not emerge until the second chorus, this time with Cantos taking a lead and the rhythm shifting from Latin to straight-four, and back, sort of. With maybe "Tea for Two" thrown in for a measure.
What makes this entire recording so much fun is listening to the inventiveness with which well known material is handled. It sounds natural, not forced, and not gimmicky, or just some device for the sake of difference. There are probably far worse ways to spend an afternoon lining up MacDonald's recent CDs on a player and just patting feet. Or perhaps an evening of live music at one of his gigs if somewhere in SoCal is home.
Track Listing
Lady Bird; Minor Makeup; Prisoner of Love; Tele Time; Walkin'; Pent Up House; dmac; Perdido.
Personnel
Album information
Title: Santa Monica Session | Year Released: 2025 | Record Label: Self-produced
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