Things we like: Nasheet Waits, Tarbaby

Not long ago, I got to watch the livestream on sfjazz.org of Dave Holland's New Quartet. Holland's probably on more records I love than any bassist but Charlie Haden, solely on the basis of his work with Miles Davis, Sam Rivers, and Anthony Braxton. He and his band played a well paced set of new material (which I can't wait to hear recorded). It was nice to hear pianist Kris Davis playing shimmering Chick-with-Miles stuff on electric, and working in a bop-adjacent idiom I hadn't heard her in before, as well as a new Davis original that had a Monk-via-Dolphy feel. Altoist Jaleel Shaw said a lot on his horn, with a distinctively light sound. 

But the band member I couldn't take my eyes off was Nasheet Waits, who played a little like Tony Williams used to in the '70s (those tom rolls!), but with a looser-limbed swing. So when not one but two new Waits recordings materialized in my inbox, I was primed to listen. Both albums drop June 28 and are part of Giant Step Arts' Modern Masters and New Horizons series (co-curated by Waits and trumpeter Jason Palmer).

New York Love Letter (Bitter Sweet) is only Waits' third album as a leader in a career dating back to the early '90s, including stints with Max Roach's M'BOOM and Jason Moran's Bandwagon. The album features Waits in a quartet with vibist Steve Nelson (who's also worked with Dave Holland, in the bassist's late '90s-early Aughts quintet and big band), tenor man Mark Turner (a veteran player whose Live at the Village Vanguard was released on Giant Step Arts in 2022), and bassist Rashaan Carter. The program consists of two Waits originals, alongside one composition each by his former employers Moran and Andrew Hill, and two by John Coltrane. All the pieces reflect aspects of Waits' experience of NYC: growing up, becoming part of the jazz scene, and enduring pandemic isolation there. The band was recorded live at Central Park's Seneca Village (historically the first free Black settlement in New York) in 2021 and at Hunter College in 2022.

On Moran's "Snake Stance," Turner displays some of his Warne Marsh influence, and Nelson takes a scintillating solo, while Waits propels things along assertively. Hill's "Snake Hip Waltz" continues the herpetological theme (which Waits relates to "a quality you really have to inhabit being a resident of NYC") and gives the soloists a wending melody to work their way around. The live recording captures all the nuances of Waits' percussive attack. 

"Moon Child," the first Waits original, is a quietly ruminative piece, inspired by its composer's Greenwich Village childhood, with Nelson out front for the theme and a luminous solo. "The Hard Way" musters ferocious energy, appropriate for a piece inspired by the railroading of the Central Park Five (one of whom now serves on NYC's City Council). The tempo slows to let Turner and Nelson wring all they can from the changes, then Waits takes off on a polyrhythmic wonder of a solo, leading into "AW," a gently lyrical theme dedicated to both Seneca Village founder Andrew Williams and Waits' son August. 

Of the Coltrane tunes, "Liberia" invokes the spirit of Pan-Africanist leader and Harlemite Marcus Garvey, opening with cymbal sounds like the creaking of a slave ship, giving way to Turner's reading of Trane's modal melody before the leader kicks the band into gear. With solos all around, it's an album high spot. Finally, the "Central Park West" here might supplant the reharmonized take on Jack DeJohnette's Special Edition as my favorite version of the tune. The warmth and intimacy of Turner's rendition, followed by Nelson's pianistic response and Turner's closing remarks, brings closure to the date.

Tarbaby is a trio -- active since the late '90s and frequent collaborators with saxophone elder Oliver Lake -- that teams Waits with pianist Orrin Evans and bassist Eric Revis. Philadelphian Evans has performed and recorded extensively over the last quarter century, including stints with the Mingus legacy bands, The Bad Plus, and his own Captain Black Big Band. I'm familiar with Los Angeles native Revis from his City of Refuge album for Clean Feed with Andrew Cyrille and Kris Davis; I need to check out his 2020 album Slipknots Through a Looking Glass on Davis' Pyroclastic label. You Think This America is Tarbaby's sixth album and first live date, recorded at NYC's Hunter College.

The selection of material demonstrates how the musicians in Tarbaby are both rooted ("stuck," if you like) in tradition, while also pursuing their own ideas and visions. Opening track is Ornette Coleman's "Dee Dee," from the Golden Circle, Volume 1 album. The trio on that record is one of the best ways to hear OC's voice unfettered; it's interesting to hear how Evans weaves a matrix of harmony around the simple, sing-song melody. "Comme Il Faut" comes from Crisis! -- the first Ornette record I heard -- and hews closer to the original, particularly in the rhythm section action. Tarbaby stays in a free jazz bag to close the album with Sunny Murray's "Tree Tops."

David Murray's syncopated waltz "Mirror of Youth" (from the titanic saxophonist's collaboration with poet Saul Williams, Blues for Memo), draws on Evans and Waits' experience playing the tune with the composer, with bassist Revis adding his own spin to the interpretation.  Andrew Hill's "Reconciliation" dances obliquely, in Monkish fashion. The cover of the Stylistics' '70s soul hit "Betcha By Golly Wow" is both a nod to Evans' Philly roots and a recognition of the songcraft of writers Thom Bell and Linda Creed. (Tarbaby has previously recorded songs by Prince and the Bad Brains.) I'd never previously noticed the similarity between Jimmy Cox's venerable "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" and D'Angelo's "The Door" until this version, which Evans embroiders in uptown fashion, shadowed by Revis at every turn.

Tarbaby's originals feel of a piece with the revamped classics. On Evans' Latin-tinged "Red Door," for instance, the composer's solo plays around with time before a deft pizzicato interval from Revis and a tumbling solo from Waits. The pianist's "Blues (When It Comes)" is an abstract modal piece marked by relentless forward motion, driven by Waits' crisp propulsion and Revis' brisk walking (including his solo), ending with an exchange of solos between piano and drums. And Evans takes Waits'  ballad "Kush" (previously recorded on 2012's The Ballad of Sam Langford for Hipnotic) down some blues and gospel-ish corridors. 

Both of these records have much to offer, and show the ongoing vitality of jazz tradition. They also mark Giant Step Arts as a label to watch.