It’s difficult to find any jazz groups that stick around together for longer than a single tour, so when the group of jazz vets called The Cookers came into town, fans of advanced hard bop felt like they were getting manna from heaven.
All leaders of bands in their own right, the team of Billy Harper/ts, George Cables/p, Billy Hart/dr, Cecil McBee/b, Craig Handy/as, David Weiss/tp and Dr. Eddie Henderson/tp displayed remarkable solo skills on their 1 ½ set of mostly band composed originals. While Harper’s wonderfully thick tone gurgled on “ Capra Black” and though Cables demonstrated class and style throughout this opener and throughout, the front line collection of horns initially sounded a bit chaotic, reminiscent of a traffic jam. It seemed at first that during the mysteriously pulsating “Peacemaker” and “Croquet Valley” that while the horns sounded bigger than their actual number, there was an overabundance of various harmonies and statements making it sound like an overcrowded danced floor with the partners stomping on too many toes.
Henderson’s tone was pungent and swinging on the charging “Peacemaker” and while on the harmon mute on “Sweet Rita Suite Part 2” he displayed, along with Craig Handy’s delicate flute, the truth that less can be more. The two artists created a velvety layer of sound, while the bluesy “Slip it and Slidin’” had Weiss brash with the brass and Cables lithe and playful. The hard driving and fierce closer “The Cure” featured drummer Billy Hart flipping his sticks faster than a hummingbird, while Henderson, Handy and Taylor turned up the butanes. Lots of heat was generated by these cookers, while at time the collective ingredients overwhelmed the palate.
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