Mike Jones with Strings

While the piano-bass-drums trio has been a fixture in jazz since the 1950s, and the instrumentation was first heard on records in 1935 when pianist Jess Stacy, bassist Israel Crosby, and drummer Gene Krupa recorded “Barrelhouse” and “The World Is Waiting For The Sunrise,” trios comprised of piano, guitar and bass were much more common in the 1940s and early ’50s. Nat King Cole made that instrumentation famous and it was utilized by Art Tatum, Page Cavanaugh, Ahmad Jamal, and Oscar Peterson among others during that period although Jamal and Peterson would eventually replace the guitar with drums.

An outstanding pianist since at least the mid-1990s, Mike Jones is generally heard as a solo pianist or leading a conventional trio with bass and drums. However, for Mike Jones with Strings, he teams up with the six strings of guitarist Graham Dechter and the four of bassist Alex Frank. Recorded live in Las Vegas, the trio happily jams seven standards plus Oscar Peterson’s “Kelly’s Blues.”

The music that the trio plays is high-quality mainstream swing-oriented jazz that sometimes recalls Peterson’s trio of the 1950s with guitarist Herb Ellis and bassist Ray Brown. With the exception of “The Very Thought Of You,” the tunes are all taken at medium-to-fast tempos. In addition to the solos, there are many exciting tradeoffs between Jones and Dechter with the two often echoing and building upon each other’s ideas while tossing in occasional humorous song quotes.

While the Jones-Dechter-Frank trio was a short-term group, the musicians sound as if they had been playing together for years. Mike Jones With String is full of fun and swinging music that will be a delight for fans of jam sessions and swing standards.

Mike Jones With Strings
Capri 74178
www.caprirecords.com
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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.