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| (© Pam Clarke) |
In two long sets the band played ten tunes either composed, arranged, or recorded by the pianist, organist and vibes player Bobby Timmons. If anyone expected just the basic Bobby Timmons soul jazz themes and nothing more, the very first tune of the evening, Stella B (named for Timmons’ wife), which began with a long improvised solo from Steve Fishwick (not for nothing is he widely known as one of the best jazz trumpet players ever produced by the UK), followed by something similar from Leon Greening, made it clear that that was not all that was on offer.
Fittingly though, Leon
Greening’s solo rolled into hard swinging blues piano territory, taking Soul
Time’s rhythm section with him - and a
delighted audience. What a band!
So they operated
beautifully together as a really funky soul jazz group. On top of that though,
all four of Soul Time are terrific individual improvisers, and I include in
that statement the bass and drums, and particularly the outstanding bass
player.
If I was a faster writer
I’d be able to provide full recording dates and personnel, together with album
titles for the tunes played, since Leon Greening is not just the band’s
stunningly impressive pianist but also its historian and introduced all the
tunes at length.
Instead I can only point out that Timmons
spent a lot of his brief career (he died in 1974 at the age of 38) with Art
Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and with bands led by the two Adderleys, as well as
leading his own groups. So all the tunes played by Soul Time were probably
written for recordings with one or other of these.
Of the ten tunes played,
six were Timmons compositions: Stella B;
Soul Time; Dat Dere (minus the Oscar Brown Jr lyrics); Damned if I Know (titled thus for want of a title before a
recording); Dis Here; and So Tired.
Note, no Moanin’.
The other four were: two tunes for Timmons by Walter Booker and Tom Macintosh; and two arrangements of standards by Timmons – a very extended version of Autumn Leaves and I Didn’t Know What Time It Was which took the evening into a whole different musical zone.
If you get the chance to
see the band, or indeed its individual members, I can’t recommend strongly
enough that you do.
If you’re in London on a
Monday night you could do worse than find out what’s on at the Oxford Tavern
which is on Kentish Town Road in Kentish Town. They have a different band every
Monday and it’ll set you back £10. It’s a couple of minutes from Kentish Town
Tube.
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