Sabertooth – Dr. Midnight: Live at the Green Mill

Delmark 579

In an ever-constricting small venue economy, long standing residencies for working jazz ensembles continue to dwindle. It’s a sobering state of affairs not lost on Sabertooth, whose own name echoes that of a long extinct beast. Thus far, they’ve managed to survive, primarily through a weekly Saturday night sustenance at Chicago’s venerable Green Mill. The club owner claims they have a lock on the gig in perpetuity and listening to this live document, some fifteen years in the offing, the reasons are readily apparent. Sabertooth plays jazz that caters but does not condescend to its audience. Fun and frivolity are of paramount concern, but not at the cost of creative stimulation.

The instrumentation recalls the soul jazz sax-plus-organ outfits that were the rage in the Windy City three decades previous, but front men Cameron Pfiffner and Pat Mallinger aren’t so easy to tag and bag. Pfiffner takes his core tenor cues from Byas and Hawkins, slipping in slivers of Rollins on the sly. Mallinger culls liberally from Coltrane, but I also hear striking shades of Booker Ervin in the keening cry that colors numerous of his lines, as on the set opener “Blues for C Piff” penned in his partner’s honor. Alto, soprano and small cache of flutes further expand the band’s tonal crayon box. Organist Pete Benson cribs from the process books of both Don Patterson and Larry Young, his snaking patterns exuding an oily fluidity and a propensity for playfully unpredictable turns. Sabertooth’s ace in the deck is drummer Ted Sirota, a staple on the scene through his own band Rebel Souls, who puts on a convincing Blakey mien, ornamenting and propelling the action without overwhelming it. His press roll showpiece on “It’s Surely Gonna Flop If It Ain’t Got That Bop” evinces but one crowd-rousing case.

The disc’s title is something of a mystery prior to the appearance of the title piece mid-set. Is it a celebration of the DC Comics superhero of the same name or a coy reference to the band’s standard start time? Taking into account the geeky erudition and humor of the saxophonists it could easily be either, but the answer ends up closer to the former as Pfiffner runs down a prefatory ode to a shadowy personage to establish a spooky mood. The rest of the program is comparably precocious. Rollins and George Braith earn nods with the contrapuntal calypso “Mary Anne” and the left field cover of “The Odd Couple,” itself an assignation apropos of the saxophonists, receives a lounge-friendly reading. The set closes with an affable capitulation to any Deadheads in the house as “China Cat Sunflower” blooms under a steady irrigation of backbeat funk. In the end there’s not much left to do but hoist a frothy beer in salute to Sabertooth’s next fifteen years!

~ Derek Taylor