“Wycliffe Gordon plays serious blues like other people can't play. With Stefon [Harris], you can feel the roots, but you can hear the progress. You can hear the tomorrow.” —John Clayton
When a ferocious band plays all the right notes ferociously well on an album full of instant hits, singling out particular beats can prove overwhelming. There’s so much going on, the ear doesn’t know where to focus on first. Everything’s excellent, let’s go home.
It’s very much the case in the Clayton Brothers’ November 6th, ArtistShare release, “The Gathering.” Brothers John (bass) and Jeff Clayton (alto saxophone/flute), John’s son and Jeff’s nephew Gerald (piano), Terell Stafford (trumpet/flugelhorn), and Obed Calvaire (drums) make up the firm foundation of this gathering, with special guest stars Wycliffe Gordon and Stefon Harris. The Clayton Brothers not only made much of the album with the acclaimed trombonist and vibraphonist in mind, but tailor-made several of the tracks to showcase the specialized instrumentation.
Both Gordon and Harris are rising, young artists mixing and melding their own kind of bluesy jazz. John and Jeff Clayton purposely sought after them for this very reason.
“We wanted both bluesy and edgy, and we get that from both of these guys, individually and collectively,” John Clayton explained. “Wycliffe Gordon plays serious blues like other people can't play. With Stefon, you can feel the roots, but you can hear the progress. You can hear the tomorrow.”
Jeff Clayton added: “We do a lot of things but we don't necessarily have that New Orleans feel in our band. Wycliffe is definitely from the Louis Armstrong era and forward to more modern things. And Stefon pushes the envelope. His group Blackout plays some very cutting edge music, so he brings this edge that we get to try to be a part of.”
All together, the Gathering became a creative dream fufilled for the Clayton Brothers family. “We realized that we've got so many friends in the business that we like playing with. Wouldn't it be fun if we could pair up with a couple of them and create this new Clayton Brothers sound?” John Clayton explained. The fun is most evident throughout the swinging 12-piece collection, ranging from hard bop and big band funk, to gospel-tinged blues and torch ballads.
Jeff, John, and Gerald Clayton wrote most of the songs on this album, except for Benny Carter’s “Souvenir” and Billie Holiday/Arthur Herzog Jr.’s “Don’t Explain.” Jeff penned “Coupe de Cone,” a greasy, high-steppin’ number, just for Gordon to wrap his bony trombone around, and “Blues Gathering” to take advantage of the classic blues the Clayton Brothers enjoy most. Jeff’s “The Happiest Of Times” is about five minutes and 16 seconds of pure, unadulterated blues bliss, as well. The horn solos are out of this world.
In stark contrast, John took Harris’ floaty, jam-packed vibes style to another level in “Stefon Fetchin’ It,” while capturing the flights of fancy exactly. The mellower “Touch The Fog” (John Clayton) and “Simple Pleasures” (Jeff Clayton) paired up Harris with Jeff on alto flute and Gerald on piano, respectively. Both ballads showcase Stefon Harris’ ability to play well with others, and taps into the emotional chameleon in everyone as they go from hard to soft, blinding to shaded.
Throughout “The Gathering,” one musician captured my heart, sometimes even lifting an otherwise ho-hum piece into the stratosphere. Every single time, my ear glommed onto the inner workings of Grammy-nominated pianist/composer Gerald William Clayton. Born in Utrecht, Netherlands, the son of John and nephew of Jeff Clayton grew up in Southern California honing his tremendous skills on classical and jazz piano, as well as composition. A firm believer in both traditional jazz and fusion, Gerald managed to capture this philosophy in his ardent, playful, incredibly visionary artistry—without alienating either side. Not an easy feat.
Jeff Clayton took on his own themes inspired by the 2011 Tohuku tsunami. Instead of going terribly dark, he lifted “Tsunami” into a bold, brassy big band reflection of the enormous waves themselves. In doing so, he almost romanticized the hypnotic ferocity (Gerald Clayton!) and sheer, mesmerizing enormity of Nature’s fury. Between the crashing waves of increasing intensity and volume in notes, tempo, and temperance (Obed Calvaire!), the unforgettable melody and driving harmonics, Jeff achieved his objective. “…instead of focusing on only the negative, devastating aspects, I thought of all the elements that create a tsunami and tried to put them in the composition,” he described. “I wanted you to hear the water and the buildings and the devastation, and then hear the water pulling back.”
“This Ain’t Nothin’ But A Party” by Jeff Clayton simply grooves from the first note. It’s a bravado of big band funk horns feeding melody in 10 different directions. When these guys play, they don’t mess around. If the previous songs haven’t driven it home yet, Gerald Clayton steals the album’s show. His piano work is phenomenal in this dancey number, a cascading filigree of teasing, patient cadences, stormy, ecstasy runs, and whiplash smatterings of blues, hands over your head gospel, with a touch of cabaret, cantilevered over an already stomping melody.
In one of only two songs written by other artists (who came way before), the Clayton Brothers ensemble does something really special, and different with Benny Carter’s well-worn bluesy “Souvenir.” But that first version—all Jeff Clayton in painful restraint and surrender, with those sweet, sweet alto sax sounds—nearly didn’t take. The ensemble was so worried about disrespecting Carter’s original melody (as played memorably in the Frank Capp/Nat Pierce Juggernaut Band) that they tried like hell to stick with it in the next take. Remembering Carter’s admonition, “I wrote that melody for a reason,” Jeff wanted to do it again, did it again to the letter, and — nope. “…we did a second take and everybody in the booth looked at each other and shook our heads like, ‘No, we want Jeff Clayton back.’ So we went back to the first take and let my brother be himself,” John Clayton explained. “I’m sure Benny would appreciate that.” Jeff uplifts “Souvenir” as his own bluesy ballad in halting, longing measures, pulling back the restrictive tones of a brass instrument and transforming it into an extension of his soul. He “spilled his soul” on this, the first and final take, according to his brother John. Jeff does indeed lay bare his soul, pulling up the best of blues — the sorrowful, yearning stretches of tone almost to the breaking point, then back — telling a complete story of the rise and fall of the attraction, and the courtship, in fallen folds of musical memory, looking back.
John Clayton’s “Touch The Fog’s” faint, faraway melody bears more than a passing resemblance to the theme from M*A*S*H. A decent showcase for guest artist, vibraphonist Stefon Harris, the song got a little tepid in parts. Harris, John and Gerald Clayton save the whole through their individual contributions. Harris throws in a blissful flurry of cadence that fragments like falling stars in his solo. There’s not much else propelling the melody from inertia in the first half, except in John’s action-oriented bass lines and Gerald’s trying to serve this slower pace well by stressing odd, counter points.
The Clayton Brothers went where very few dare to tread, into the tricky minefield of straightforward, swinging jazz and bluesy, revolutionary parts in between, pooling together a force field of veterans and young guns. They came out the other end with a new, winning sound for the ages, because they know what they’re doing, and they’re that good.
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