Sometimes, you just forget that there are still jazz pianists like Marcus Johnson around. Every song on his latest album with drummer Chris “Biscuit” Bynum and Antone’ “Chooky” Caldwell (even the nicknames should have been a giveaway) has a “live” nightclub feel. These guys are a working unit, with Johnson’s confident digits mixing the churchified confidence of Gene Harris with the fusion funk of Joe Sample.
Johnson’s got a full bodied and fisted touch, swinging with soul around Caldwell’s sleekly snapping electric bass as on “Road To Los Suenos” and works the team with some clever dynamics, pulling here, pushing there and taking it soft then tough as on a fun ride of “Mas Que Nada” and the mellow soul of “Summertime Flo”. Caldwell himself is a force of nature, bending and snapping like Reese Witherspoon around Bynum’s hi hat on “Doc’s Groove” and doing some strutting and strolling with Bynum on a swaggering “Right Now”. Johnson shows his more romantic side on a patiently lyrical “Fortunate” that allows space that only a master could allow without rushing, while he gives a gospel feel to the Sunday backbeat of “This Place Hotel”. This team knows how to work a room! Old School? Naw, Graduate School!