Hammond Eggs
“Hammond Eggs” offers you a spirited synthesis of earthy blues, bold funkiness and a rich vocabulary of modern jazz from the first to the last bar. The grooving title track is a New Orleans shuffle, with lusty drumming by Terzic and impressively solid B3 and guitar soli. With “Gypsy Steps” Landsberger transforms the Coltrane classic, “Giant Steps” and turns it into a fast-paced piece with complex unison playing by the quartet. With “Remembering Jimmy”, Morello presents a reminder of his spell with the boss of the B3. It’s a tribute to his mentor, Jimmy Smith, who would most certainly have been highly imPressd. On the samba, “Batida Diferente”, Landsberger proves that the organ also feels at home in the tropical part of the world .This composition, by Durval Ferreira and Mauricio Einhorn, gets a surprising treatment: Morello contributes a Brazilian flavour which is taken up by the organ and hotted up by Terzic’s manifold percussive effects.
Twice the band honours the Hungarian guitar player, Kosta Lukacs. A close friend of Jermaine’s father, Lukacs died in 1992. His originals – “Latin Movin’” and “Song For My Little Daughter” – are dreamy and harmonically elaborate works of art. To the first, Peter Weniger makes a delicate contribution and, in the second, a sad and moving melody, Landsberger and Morello team up for an intimate dialogue. There is an authentic, after-hours mood to the sensual ballad, “If You Could See Me Now”, matching the Sarah Vaughan version with its imaginative excursions on keys and strings. And Weniger’s saxophone has another impassioned moment of glory in the soulful and sensitively rendered “Bright Sky“.
If “ham and eggs” guarantee an energetic start to a new day, then “Hammond Eggs” will ensure that your verve and vitality will endure into the late-night hours.
IOR CD 77087-2
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From the Linernotes:
„Apart from being an excruciating pun, the title of this album is quite appropriate, because ham and eggs go extremely well together. And so do Paulo Morello and Jermaine Landsberger.”
– Mike Hennessey
