David "Fathead" Newman - Diamondhead

HighNote 7179

The minting of fresh David “Fathead” Newman records has been an annual HighNote event for seven years straight. This latest entry continues the streak and is meant as a celebration of the saxophonist’s impending seventy-fifth year on the planet. Newman’s spent a good portion of that lifespan immersed in the jazz life. He gigged with Ornette as a teenager in Dallas before helping make music history as prominent sideman in the bands of Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin in later years. Forays into pop, blues, funk and orchestral settings proved lucrative moves, but in every situation he wore his Texas tenor roots proudly and still does. In light of such protracted productivity, he’s an easy player to take for granted. This session as much as any other in his voluminous catalog demonstrates the folly of assigning him placement on the periphery.

Band instrumentation for the date recalls the Jazz Crusaders and the program limns a songbook similar to the one favored by that venerable ensemble. Boogaloo tunes like the title track and “My Full House” are somewhat staid in construction, but from the start the session’s more about how the musicians play rather than what they play. Pianist Cedar Walton and trombonist Curtis Fuller are old friends of Newman as well as contemporaries. Fuller sounds a shade slowed by age, but his lubricous slurs and slides are still an effective frontline foil. Walton betrays some subtle Silverisms from the piano bench, but he’s long past aping anyone and certifiable hardbop royalty in his own right. Bassist Peter Washington and drummer Yoron Israel are younger in years, but just as amenable to the saxophonist’s unequivocally populist designs. Sax peer Houston Person occupies a behind the scenes position as producer and his presence further cement’s the session’s adherence to accessibility.

Newman cycles deftly between tenor, alto and flute evincing authoritative voices on each. His sound on the large horn is full and buttery on the ballad “Skylark”, hard and soulful on “Cedar’s Blues”, while alto naturally encompasses a more lissome approach on “Can’t We Be Friends”. The crisp and nimble flute work on “Mama Lou” references the kind of whistling vocalized intensity of Roland Kirk with Newman engaging in some hair-raising chases with Walton’s keys. The first and third axes factor into an effective reading of Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind” and bring surprise jazz tenability to that slushy slice of Seventies pop pap. Newman’s pretty much seen it all in a musical sense and the switch from corpulence to precious stone in sobriquet, at least for the purposes of this record, feels more than warranted.

~ Derek Taylor