Ain't Doing Too B-A-D, Bad - Bobby Bryant

 

Change Is Gonna Come

Ain't Doing Too B-A-D, Bad

The Bobby Bryant Sextet

Album Production: Esmond Edwards

Album Supervision: Charles Hammond

Cover Photo: Lou Blackburn

Cover Design: Jerry Griffith

Recorded: February, 1967, at Marty's On The Hill, Los Angeles, California

Engineer: Wally Heider

Cadet Records LP 795

1967

Bobby Bryant - Trumpet

Hadley Caliman - Tenor Saxophone 

Herman Riley - Tenor Saxophone

Joe Sample - Piano 

John Duke - Bass

Carl Lott - Drums

From the back cover: Sometimes the best way to be eloquent is to be ungrammatical. Duke Ellington proved that in 1932 when he wrote It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing. By the same token, some of the smoothest jazz on the scene has the roughest edges running though it.

Bobby Bryant is the perfect embodiment of these contradictions. As urbane as he is urban (a gentleman with muscles), bobby reveals his Hattiesburg, Mississippi, roots as soon as he fronts his own hard-driving sextet. It comes out in an idiom known as "down home", a sensuous, funky, blues-based, gospel-tinged sound that makes even the most inhibited and tone-deaf react to its unabashed earthiness. (A classic example of the spontaneous reaction can the heard in the midst of Bobby's opening cadenza. One of his fans at Mart's urged him on with the remark that was destined bo became the albums' title: Ain't Doin' Too B-A-D, Bad.)

Another facet of Bobby's musical personality is found in his studio activities. He is one of Los Angeles' most sought-after trumpeters, not only for the burgeoning movie and TV soundtrack activates, but to work in the bands formed by greats such as Oliver Nelson, Gary McFarland and Charles Mingus for festivals and special club engagements. 

That's when his Chicago and Los Angeles backgrounds come to the fore. And that's when his flawless reading ability and his durable chops come in handy. Studio work is demanding in Hollywood: an eight o'clock call at Warner Bros., rehearsal for the Andy Williams show, recording sessions into the wee hours... it requires the kind of musicianship and constitution that Bobby has – and thrives on.

While the two sides of Bobby Bryant are comparative, his musical make-up does indicate a presence for the raw emotion of swinging in a club, stretching out if the mood hits him and exchanging ideas in a highly charged atmosphere of call and response – not only with his side men, but with his "congregation". Which brings to mind Della Reese's accolade, quoted in the DOWN BEAT profiled of Bobby, "This isn't a lounge... this is a Baptist church and we're having' a revival meeting."

And that's the feeling that should hit you once you start listening to these preachments. Sunny Demonstrates how intensity can build even at a provocatively slow tempo. Bobby sermon is urged on by the soulful riffs of tenor saxophonists Hadley Caliman and Herman Riley. An even slower tempo, the booming bass of John Duke, the contractual lines off the two tenors and  the occasional double-time feel by drummer Carl Lott proved a lush foundation for Bobby's big fat tone on Dale Frank's arrangement of Love Is Supreme.

The other Dale Frank chart in this collection (all the rest are by Bobby Bryant), Don't Say Goodbye, show how rock can by intelligently integrated with jazz. It also shows pianist Joe Sample at his funkiest, whether coming behind Herman Riley's gutsy solo or stating his own full-bodied thoughts.

Herman Riley is given the chance to stretch out in the Stix Hopper original, Blues For Ramona. The track cooks immediately, thanks to some tasteful walking by Johnny Dukes. Toward the end of Riley's solo, there is a wild, free-swinging Dixieland-type chorus that finds the whole front line breaking it iup. Before the number ends, Joe Sample contributes his most inspired solo.

Bobby's horn of plenty dominated the Sam Cook tune, A Change Is Gonna Come; and while the same warm, forceful tone livens up Girl Talk, this track also says a great deal about Bobby's writing. The three-way voicing, with its oversew of phrasing) note the control of dynamics on the title itself: "Talk" is almost a whisper_ one Carl Lott's "Stripper" accents on the second and fourth beats of each measure run this girl talk into a funk gabfest.

The most characteristic sound – and the most requested tuen in Bobby's book – is his own 58th Street; a unison head that seems to have been hewn from granite; the tenors' response to Bobby's exhortations; the rock-bound enticement of Carl Lott; the extended break in the release climaxed by Joe Sample's churchy pick-up phrase; and Bobby's dramatic postscript while the tenors trill... this is the stuff that keeps jazz alive. As long as you can buy records like this or hear combos like Bobby's, jazz "ain't doin' too bad." – Burt Nelson - Hollywood Citizen-News

Sunny

Love Is Supreme

Blues For Ramona

A Change Is Gonna Come

58th Street

Girl Talk

Don't Say Goodbye