BOB
DEVOS
Playing for Keeps
(Savant)
Playing for Keeps finds veteran guitarist Bob DeVos playing to his strengths
once again, favoring the kind of Hammond B3 grooves that he mastered while
collaborating with Trudy Pitts, Jack McDuff, Charles Earland and other great
jazz organists. No question: DeVos sounds perfectly at home here.
“The
spiritual source” of inspiration for this 10-tune set, writes DeVos in the
album’s liner notes, is the Larry Young/Grant Green/Elvin Jones ’60s trio,
but the guitarist’s own three-piece combo, augmented on four cuts by tenor
saxophonist Eric Alexander, covers a lot of ground, making nods along the way to
Miles Davis, Wes Montgomery, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Eddie Harris, even
Booker T. & the MGs.
Highlights?
A brush-stroked, triple-meter take on “Body and Soul” certainly makes the
cut, with its Coltrane-inspired contours and soulful lyricism. The album’s
opening and closing tracks also qualify: “And So It Goes” offers a modal
framework for a series of swift and swinging improvisations by Alexander, DeVos
and organist Dan Kostelnik, while “Wes Is More,” the DeVos-penned tribute to
Montgomery, provides a smoking, riffing blues coda.
Elsewhere,
DeVos’ impressionistic ballad “Speech Without Words” surfaces amid trio
arrangements that showcase the bandleader’s unmistakable flair for arranging.
Particularly enjoyable are the trio’s fluid and foot-tapping version of McCoy
Tyner’s “Blues on the Corner,” nimbly punctuated by drummer Steve Johns,
and the sensuous, insinuating recital of Monk’s “Ask Me Now.”
-Mike
Joyce
