Why did I miss this gig?
Vitellos is the venerable jazz club/restaurant best known for a) the hang out for the Rat Pack guys where they’d bring their broads up stairs for carousing and music and b) where Robert Blake shot his wife. It’s still a fantastic restaurant, and before the stupid COVID lockdown, hosted tons of great jazz gigs.
This album is a recording of one of them, back a couple of years, with pianist Michael Wolff leading a hard bopping team of horn man Mark Isham, bassist John B. Williams and the legendary ex-Headhunter drummer Mike Clark. The set features Isham gloriously gasping on the desultory “Ballad Noir” and searing to Clark’s perfect groove on “Nefertitit” while pleading alongside Wolff’s rich fingers on the shadowed “The Conversation”. The trio sizzles like a 3 inch steak on “Lagniappe” and is nifty for “Falling Down” as Clark gives a backbeat that will turn every listener into a bobblehead doll on “Loft Funk”. Wolff is marvelous through the night, but the entire band is state of the art? How did I miss this gig? Boy, do I miss it nowadays!!!
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