Charles Chen: The Long Way Home

The Long Way Home is a fascinating album, not so much for the music alone—even though that is first-class—but for the lengthy interviews with the Charles Chen quartet's bassist and drummer, 98-year-old Bill Crow and 91-year-old Steve Little, respectively, who still anchor a regular weekly gig at Smalls Jazz Club in New York City.

Crow and Little, each of whom has played and recorded with a veritable who's who of jazz luminaries, talk informally about their early influences, their introduction to jazz, and their association with legendary musicians from Duke Ellington, Charlie Barnet and Stan Getz to Gerry Mulligan, Zoot Sims, Charlie Parker and more. One surprise is Little's long-running commercial career and his love-hate relationship with jazz; another is that Crow arrived in New York City in 1950 not as a bassist but as a valve trombonist, one of his several instruments. The interviews, which, taken together, total roughly twenty-six minutes, are informative and delightful.

The music is delightful too, as Chen's quartet glides easily through an engaging playlist that consists of five well-known standards, original compositions by Oscar Pettiford and Johnny Hodges, Sam Cooke's pop hit "You Send Me" and a medley of Ellington themes ("Prelude to a Kiss," "I Got It Bad," "Sophisticated Lady"). Tempos are for the most part moderate, with only Hodges' frisky "Squatty Roo" and Franz Lehar's too-seldom-heard "Yours Is My Heart Alone" kicking up any dust. Chen's approach to the piano is marvelous; whatever the format, he always finds the proper note or phrase, and does so with eloquence and taste.

The group's fourth member is guitarist Felix Lemerle, who, like Chen, is a superb soloist as well as a devoted team player whose efforts firmly seal the enterprise. Lemerle plays a mostly smooth and mellow guitar, which some observers may note is its most suitable posture. The quartet opens with Pettiford's amiable "Laverne Walk" before moving on to the standards "You Turned the Tables on Me" (read as a charming foxtrot) and Cole Porter's waltz-like "Dream Dancing." "Squatty Roo" is next, followed by "On the Alamo" and "You Send Me." The graceful Ellington medley leads to "Yours Is My Heart Alone" and the closing "Poor Butterfly."

Music or spoken word; take your pick, or encase both, as whichever one you choose, it's definitely a win-win. In other words, as previously noted, The Long Way Home is by any measure a fascinating album and well worth checking out.