Charlie Watts Meets The Danish Radio Big Band

Charlie Watts
Charlie Watts Meets The Danish Radio Big Band
Impulse!/Verve

Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts always has a love of jazz and his Tentet's live recording at the famed London club, Ronnie Scott's is just one instance of this. In 2010 he spent several days with the Danish Radio Big Band and presented a concert at the then newly opened Concert Hall of Denmark in Copenhagen that was broadcast on Danish National Radio and now has been made available on CD. The promotional materials I received do not include personnel or identify the various instrumentalists besides Watts and bassist Dave Green.

The performance with "Elvin Suite" that Watts cowrote with Jim Keltner, This two-part tribute to Elvin Jones," opens with a lush, lovely initial part with marvelous arranging of the horns around a deliberately played and paced guitar solo and some marvelous harmonies surrounding short trumpet and trombone leads and a bass solo leads into some growling trombone. The second part picks up the groove as Watts evokes Jones with percussion support before some robust tenor saxophone over percussion before the full band joins in to add to the heat.

Watts leads with a funk-bossa nova groove for "Faction," his reworking of the Stones' signature tune "Satisfaction," with marvelous trumpet with the guitar accompanying with short bursts and chords. It is fascinating how Watts added to the original melody here while keeping its basic structure. There is also another fervent tenor sax solo and husky baritone sax with the very imaginative scoring of the other horns. It is one of three Stones numbers heard here. The Stones original "You Can't Always Get What You Want" had an orchestral and choral setting, so it is not surprising it is transformed into a big band setting with a bit of funk in the groove and greasy organ (with a horn riff in the arrangement that evokes Cannonball Adderly's recording of "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.") with strong trumpet and a swirling soprano sax solo. "Paint It Black" becomes a jazz ballad with the guitarist setting for the song, evoking the lyrics as the horns provide varying colors as he snakes his playing through this.

"I Should Care," is a lovely, almost dreamy performance with some wonderful mid-range trumpet and trombone while the closing "Molasses" is a rollicking, high stepping blues in the vein of "Night Train" and similar instrumentals with more sinewy tenor sax (like Jimmy Forrest playing with the 70s Basie Band), growling trombone, and organ trading riffs with the horns with the intensity building before the horns cool things to close out this very striking recording that shows that the Stones' drummer is much more than a rocker.

I received a download to review from a publicist. Here is a short video of Charlie Watts with The Danish Radio Big Band.

Curtis Stigers With The Danish Radio Big Band
One More For the Road
Concord Jazz

Singer-Songwriter-Saxophonist Curtis Stigers newest album is inspired by the Frank Sinatra's legendary performances at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas backed by the Count Basie Orchestra. 

Backed by The Danish Radio Big Band, he is heard performing at the band’s headquarters, the acoustic marvel that is the DR Koncerthuset in Copenhagen. The liner notes state that band plays "vibrant takes based on the original Nelson Riddle and Billy May arrangements…" which may refer to the arrangements of Sinatra's original recordings of songs heard here since Quincy Jones arranged and conducted the Sinatra-Basie collaborations.

This is not an effort to replicate the original performance (Only 8 of the 10 numbers are from the recording from the Sands) and Stigers suggests Old Blue Eyes as opposed to imitating him with his vocals. This is an enjoyable recording starting with "Come Fly With Me," through "You Make Me Feel So Young," "My Kind of Town," "Fly Me To The Moon," and the "The Lady Is a Tramp" before closing with "One For My Baby (and One More For the Road)," which like the Sinatra recording with Basie, is with essentially piano accompaniment. The Danish Radio Big Band is terrific throughout and Stigers engaging vocals make this somewhat short (34 minutes) a listening delight.

I received my review copy from Concord Records. This review originally appeared in the January-February 2017 Jazz & Blues Report (Issue 370) jazz-blues.com. Here is a trailer for this recording.