Champian Fulton • House Party

For her 40th birthday and her 20th album as a leader, pianist-singer Champian Fulton hosted a party at the recording studios of Turtle Bay Records. Friends were invited and, rather than just being a studio session, the live recording documented a celebration and a lot of rewarding music.

Champian Fulton has continued to grow as a singer and a jazz pianist through the years. In fact, her voice has rarely sounded lovelier than on the House Party CD. The seven songs feature the birthday girl with her regular teammates: bassist Hide Tanaka and drummer Fukushi Tainaka. The trio comes out swinging from the start on a medium-tempo “The One I Love” and, after a slow vocal chorus on “I Cried For You,” they take the song at a racehorse tempo; Tanaka’s bowed bass solo is noteworthy.

On “Stardust,” Fulton sings the verse while just accompanied by altoist Klas Lindquist, whose playing is reminiscent of Sonny Stitt. The rhythm section joins during the chorus, but it would have been more interesting and unique if the performance had remained a duet. However, the pianist’s expressive singing makes this the highpoint of the album.

Wayne Shorter’s “One By One” was a hard bop classic for Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and the trio excels on thr fairly modern number. “Get Out Of Town,” which has Cory Weeds guesting on tenor, has a mysterious feel that is accentuated by the singer’s quietly sensuous vocal. On what would have been a logical closer, the quintet with both saxophonists jam on the medium-tempo Charlie Parker blues “Billie’s Bounce.” A request for Mabel Mercer’s “Carry Me Back To Old Manhattan” (recorded by Fulton and Weeds a few years ago) is somewhat anti-climatic but does not lessen the happy vibes from Champian Fulton’s House Party.

House Party
Turtle Bay TBR 26003
www.turtlebayrecords.com

Scott Yanow

Since 1975 Scott Yanow has been a regular reviewer of albums in many jazz styles. He has written for many jazz and arts magazines, including JazzTimes, Jazziz, Down Beat, Cadence, CODA, and the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, and was the jazz editor for Record Review. He has written an in-depth biography on Dizzy Gillespie for AllMusic.com. He has authored 11 books on jazz, over 900 liner notes for CDs and over 20,000 reviews of jazz recordings. Yanow was a contributor to and co-editor of the third edition of the All Music Guide to Jazz. He continues to write for Downbeat, Jazziz, the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, the Jazz Rag, the New York City Jazz Record and other publications.