Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra caps jazz festival with a roar
September 4, 2007
BY MARK STRYKER
Is the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra the best big band on the planet? It’s a silly question, of course, because bands as diverse as those led by Bob Brookmeyer, Maria Schneider, Gerald Wilson, Wynton Marsalis and the cooperative Vanguard Jazz Orchestra are rooted in such contrasting aesthetics that the notion of “the best” is a chimera.
But I’ll say this after hearing the Los Angeles-based Clayton-Hamilton band close out the Detroit International Jazz Festival Monday night at the Hart Plaza Amphitheatre: There’s no band in the world right now that swings as hard as this one, and any group willing to take them on in a battle of the bands might want to have a chaplain standing by just in case.
The band, with violinist Regina Carter as a special guest, played one of the most viscerally thrilling sets of the entire festival. It was, in fact, the most satisfying festival finale in memory. The opening “I Be Serious About Dem Blues” catalogued many of the band’s strengths, among them the big-train swing, drummer Jeff Hamilton’s marriage of power and precision, dynamics that ranged from whispers to startling roars and the charismatic ensemble that, after 22 years of working together, breathes as one.
The band features a gaggle of soloists with strong personalities, including tenor saxophonist Ricky Woodward, trombonist and former Detroiter George Bohanon and the band’s heart-and-soul, 88-year-old trumpeter Snooky Young — who played lead with nearly every important big band in jazz dating back to Jimmie Lunceford in 1939. Young’s strutting plunger-mute breaks set the table for Monday’s entire set.
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But fundamental to the success of any big band is the vision of its composers and arrangers. Here those duties fall entirely to John Clayton, who combines the tradition of Count Basie arrangers like Frank Foster and Ernie Wilkins with more modern influences, especially the Pontiac-born Thad Jones. Like Basie’s arrangers, Clayton builds swing into his charts via punchy rhythm and phrases that ride the beat; he doesn’t overstuff the music with cerebral tricks and tangents.
Which is not to say Clayton isn’t sophisticated. Even a straight-ahead blues like the opener was invigorated by twists of rhythm, melody, harmony and orchestration. His arrangement on “Squatty Roo,” a swing-era jump tune, slyly merged pre-war and post-war big band idioms, from headstrong riffing to slippery rhythms. Like Jones, Clayton writes juicy brass chords thick with astringent harmony and his saxophone lines can have a pixieish quality. Those qualities came together in a smoldering arrangement of Sonny Stitt’s sine qua non of bebop, “The Eternal Triangle.”
A gifted bassist, Clayton solos with the band but leaves the ensemble work to Christoph Luty. Clayton also conducts. Monday he stalked the alley in front of the band in animated fashion like his former boss Gerald Wilson (another octogenarian who led his own band at the festival Sunday and had a front row seat Monday).
Carter, the festival’s artist-in-residence who has worked with the Clayton-Hamilton band previously, took sly solos on several tunes, among them Wilson’s bluesy shuffle “Imagine My Frustration.” She also sat in the saxophone section on a number, and played a joyously relaxed version of “A Tisket-A-Tasket” with just the rhythm section including Clayton on bass. The music bounced along, accompanied by wide grins from both Carter and Clayton, and as I looked around, it was hard to find anyone at Hart Plaza who wasn’t smiling.
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