Somewhere In time, drummer Charlie Watts got sidetracked from a career of swing and bop to become a member of the world’s most famous rock band, The Rolling Stones. Ah! Such are the vagarities of life!
Every now and then Watts returns to the first love of his life, and this recording of a 2010 concert at the Danish Radio Concert Hall is his strongest outing yet. The concerts includes a two part Watts original, “Elvin Suite” with rich and textured elegiac themes and motifs as well as deft solos by solos by Per Gade/g and David Green/b on the mild and Coplane-sque“Part One” and Uffe Markussen delivering some fierce and fiery tenor work on the rumbling “Part 2” that delivered thoughts of Coltrane’s “Africa” with Dolphy-inspired horn arrangements. Arranger Gerard Presencer does wonders with a floating “I Should Care,” and the team swings like Count Basie is back in town on a toe tapping “Molasses” with Watts teaming up with Saren Frost for a double dose of drumskins.
Most enjoyable of all are a pair of songs from Watt’s tenure with The Glimmer Twins, as “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” builds up to a swinging climax and “Paint It Black” is gloriously film noir black and white with Presencer’s Freddie Hubberd-toned flugelhorn and Gade’s guitar creating rich passages. This album stands up on its own two feet, and even if Ringo were behind the traps I’d want to hear this one. It will surprise you!
Impulse! Records