What's New on WDCB... with Paul Abella

Carmen Bradford with The Compass Jazz Orchestra – Carmen Sings Carmen (Artist Alliance Records)

Vocalist Carmen Bradford remembers the legendary Jazz singer Carmen McRae on her latest album Carmen Sings Carmen. Joined by the Compass Jazz Orchestra, They run through an eleven song program which hits on a lot of the expected bases: Thelonious Monk tunes, Great American Songbook standards, and a few more obscure songs that McRae sang in the course of her career. Bradford, as always, is in great voice, and The Compass Jazz Orchestra is a hard swinging band with captivating arrangements full of twists and turns that weave in, out and around their featured attraction. The net result is a thoroughly enjoyable album from beginning to end for fans of vocal Jazz, big band Jazz, straight ahead swinging Jazz and just plain old good Jazz.

Mike LeDonne’s Groover Quartet – Turn it Up! Live at the Sidedoor (Cellar Music)

So, Turn It Up! Live at the Sidedoor, the new album from Mike LeDonne’s Groover Quartet, is actually a bit of a surprise. Sure, it’s a full length set of Mike LeDonne sitting at the mighty Hammond B-3, with help from Eric Alexander (tenor sax), Peter Bernstein (guitar) and Joe Farnsworth (drums) from 2024, but then, it’s also a whole second show from 20 years prior with that same smokin’ band. From the first notes of “Slow Freight,” The Groover Quartet is deep in the pocket, delivering the goods. When they bring the tempos down and let things simmer like on “Mary Lou’s Blues,” or “Lament,” the prettiness shines, and when they turn up the heat on “I Love Music” or “Cherokee,” the tempo might be frenetic, but the grooves are just as strong. If Turn it Up! proves anything, it’s that the only thing better than one disc of The Groover Quartet is two discs of The Groover Quartet, and that’s exactly what we’ve got here.

Steven Oquendo Latin Jazz Orchestra – Live at Dizzy’s: A Centennial Tribute to Tito & Tito (Truth Revolution Records)

The Steven Oquendo Latin Jazz Orchestra, the band behind the new album Live at Dizzy’s: A Centennial Tribute to Tito & Tito is a tribute to two Mambo titans: Tito Puente and Tito Rodriguez. Both of them played regularly at New York City’s Palladium Ballroom, and they both left their fingerprints all over the world of Latin Jazz. Even the casual Jazz fan will recognize some of the titles here: “Mambo Inn” and “Joy Spring” among them. For those of us who really love some Afro-Cuban music, there is a lot to love and to share here: “El Que Se Fue” and “Mama Guela” jump out of the speakers as versions with as much life as the Rodriguez originals, and Tito Puente’s “Machito Forever” and “Yambu” are both stone cold killers. Not only is this clearly going to get plenty of love on The Mambo Inn and during the Latin Bit, but I think you’ll hear DCB Jazz DJ’s fitting this one into their shows, too. This one cooks.