Joe Webb: Summer Chill
Author: Alyn Shipton
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Musicians: |
Alex Haines |
Label: |
Ubuntu |
Magazine Review Date: |
August/2022 |
Media Format: |
CD, DL |
Catalogue Number: |
0115 |
RecordDate: |
Rec. 2022 |
The title says it all. This is an album designed to conjure up a relaxed, sunny atmosphere, which pianist/leader Joe Webb envisions as background to a pool party. His own laid-back composition ‘Catalan Jumper’ was written to depict driving with the hood down on the sunlit boulevards of Hollywood, and other tracks such as ‘You Are My Sunshine’ and ‘One Mint Julep’ continue the theme. Webb is quite open about the way this album has absorbed the influence of Erroll Garner, to the extent of including another original –‘Errollesque’.
But this is the latterday Erroll of the Octave Records period, which, even in Garner’s skilled hands, did contain music that is – if one’s honest about it – rather vacuous. The incessant Latin percussion backdrop here grates after a while, and when Webb diverges from the pattern, for example in a far-too-fast ‘Corner Pocket’ (which never allows his own timing to relax properly into a sympathetic Basie-esque feel), it doesn’t really show off his prodigious gifts as a soloist. So stick a burger on the barbie and have this playing in the background, but don't expect the kind of musical riches that Webb so often produces in the live setting, where people are listening to, rather than just hearing, the music.
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