It’s All Your Fault (Savant)
Mike LeDonne
Released May 2021
JazzTimes Top 40 Jazz Albums of 2021
YouTube:
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Spotify:
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About:
Mike LeDonne belongs to an elite group of musicians — those who have mastered the piano AND the organ while creating original voices for each. However, here on It’s All Your Fault, LeDonne sits down at the organ, puts his foot on the pedals and lays down some of the hippest organ licks you’re likely to hear. Two groups are featured on this recording. Mike LeDonne’s Groover Quartet has had the rare opportunity to play and record together for twenty years and counting. They had no difficulty integrating their sound into this all-star big band put together by Mike and his preferred arranger and conductor, Dennis Mackrel. Recorded in the famed Van Gelder Studio and actually using the original Hammond C-3 organ that Jimmy Smith et al. used for their recordings, the music within this recording is adventurous. It’s a continuation of the groove that was established years ago by organists interacting with big bands and it reveals to us the Blues, the Rhythm & Blues and the Jazz that Mike heard coming up through the jazz ranks.
Track Listing:
1. It’s All Your Fault (Mike LeDonne) 06:35
2. Matador (Grant Green) 06:46
3. Rock With You (Dwight Myers / Rod Temperton) 06:11
4. Still (Lionel Richie) 06:55
5. Party Time (Lee Morgan) 05:33
6. Bags and Brown (Mike LeDonne) 05:17
7. Biggest Part of Me (David Pack) 06:20
8. Blues for Jed (Mike LeDonne) 07:53
Personnel:
Mike LeDonne’s Big Band (1-3, 5-6)
Mike LeDonne: organ, Hammond B3
Steve Wilson: alto saxophone
Jim Snidero: alto saxophone
Eric Alexander: tenor saxophone
Scott Robinson: tenor saxophone
Jason Marshall: baritone saxophone
Jon Faddis: trumpet
Frank Greene: trumpet
Joe Magnarelli: trumpet
Joshua Bruneau: trumpet
Mark Patterson: trombone
Steve Davis: trombone
Dion Tucker: trombone
Doug Purviance: trombone
John Webber: bass
Peter Bernstein: guitar
Joe Farnsworth: drums
Mike LeDonne’s Groover Quartet (4, 7, 8)
Mike LeDonne: organ
Eric Alexander: tenor saxophone
Peter Bernstein: guitar
Joe Farnsworth: drums
Recorded February 12 – 13, 2020, at Van Gelder Recording Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Produced bu Mike LeDonne
Executive Producer: Jed Paradies
Recording Engineer: Maureen Sickler
Mixed by Chris Sulit
Photography by Gulnara Khamatova
Graphic Design by Cristopher Drukker
Review:
Even though
listed on only four tracks, organist Mike LeDonne’s superlative Groover
Quartet performs on every one of the nine selections on LeDonne’s admirable new
recording, It’s All Your Fault—and that’s a good thing, as each member of
the quartet (LeDonne, tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander, guitarist Peter
Bernstein, drummer Joe Farnsworth) is an accomplished soloist and ardent
team player. On the album’s remaining tracks, the quartet is assimilated into
LeDonne’s seventeen- member big band, a taut and high-powered unit that wrests
every measure of warmth and color from impressive charts by conductor Dennis
Mackrel.
The full band rocks and roars on the opening three numbers, echoing a bygone
era when Jimmy Smith, Richard “Groove” Holmes, Jack
McDuff and other maestros of the Hammond played and recorded with large
ensembles (a tradition upheld today by LeDonne and Joey DeFrancesco, among
others). LeDonne’s voice on organ is strong yet not overwhelming, deftly
shouldering the melodies while allowing the band to assert its interactive
point of view, which it does with alacrity. Despite the presence in the ensemble of several world-class soloists (Steve
Wilson, Jim Snidero, Scott Robinson, Jon Faddis and Joe
Magnarelli spring to mind), every solo on the album is entrusted to a
member of the Groover Quartet. Is that a problem? Not when LeDonne,
Bernstein, Farnsworth or Alexander is out front, as all are proven masters of
their craft. Alexander is always a pleasure to hear, and any enterprise in
which he takes part rises above and beyond special. His solos, which reach at
times beyond post-bop to a freer, more inclusive realm, are as sharp and nimble
as they are persuasive—as indeed are those by LeDonne and Bernstein.
Relishing the skirmish,
LeDonne leaves no doubt that this is his gig, taking charge from the outset on
the groovy “It’s All Your Fault,” sculpting a pair of stalwart solos
around similar pronouncements by Alexander and Bernstein. “The
Matador” encompasses more of the same albeit with a disparate solo order
(Alexander, Bernstein, LeDonne, Farnsworth), while “Rock with You”
swings as hard as its precursors, with Alexander in exemplary form and
Bernstein and LeDonne as ardent and impressive as ever. The quartet takes center stage on Lionel
Richie’s easygoing “Still,” as it does on “Biggest Part of
Me” and LeDonne’s bright and breezy closer, “Blues for Jed.”
LeDonne wrote “It’s All Your Fault” and the irrepressible “Bags
and Brown” for the big band, which also performs Lee Morgan’s
shuffling “Party Time.” With a band of this caliber, soloists as keen
and masterful as these, and lively charts that invariably ensnare the
ear, It’s All Your Fault is an album that fairly screams
“encore!” Let’s hope the interlude between this masterwork and
its successor is brief.
Jack Bowers (All About Jazz)
