Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.
The Los Angeles-based trio of guitarist Mike Clinco, Hammond organist John Van Tongeren and drummer Kendall Kay formed in 2013 as Trinom3 and began honing their unique approach to the organ trio sound. With a shared vision for improvisational music, and a list of collective credits that includes everybody from Tony Williams to Jeff Beck, Ella Fitzgerald to Rod Stewart, their sound is groove-oriented, and informed by Van Tongeren and Clinco’s experience in jazz, rock, R&B, and film scoring music. In 2015, the group released its debut album. They expand their musical palette on their new CD, “Just a Bit Further,” recorded at the Blue Room in L.A., with the addition of special guests Bob Sheppard on tenor sax and Walt Fowler on trumpet.
Chris Hazelton’s Boogaloo 7 put themselves firmly on the jazz map after their debut album of 2016 was a hit with jazz aficionados all over the world, a disc recorded live during their weekly gig at the Green Lady Lounge in Kansas City. Their sophomore record, “The Basement Beat,” is not only a nod to Hazelton’s Sunflower Soul studio, which is located in the basement of a dentist’s office, but also the group’s monthly residency at the Eighth Street Tap Room in Lawrence, Kansas, also located in a basement. This authentic slice of soul-jazz includes four Hazelton originals, a blazing cover of a tune by legendary guitarist Melvin Sparks, and a proper tribute to the late soul queen Sharon Jones.
Also this week, keyboardist Ben Paterson gathered his trio and a busload of people into the hallowed grounds of Rudy Van Gelder’s Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, studio for the concert recording “Live at Van Gelder’s”.
Singer Cyrille Aimee was in concert at Le Poisson Rouge in New York for her new “Live” CD.
Veteran vocalist Marty Elkins offers up her fourth release as a leader, “Fat Daddy.”