Hamilton

When, early seventies, Scott Hamilton made his international debut, it was a kind of sensation. On the album cover he looked like a guy from the fifties or even earlier. The music he played also had the taste of yore. Of all those great swingers that preceded him. Scott Hamilton seemed a fad that would fade. Not so with Hamilton. Happily. His style was a matter of pure love. A love to which he stayed faithful. With that ideal mastery of the flowery language of swing and bop. Up to the smallest punctuation marks. Being able to use them fluently in enjoyable stories everyone could like. By lovingly blowing new life into his ‘standards’.

Scott Hamilton and Duško Gojković, two excellent jazz players, joined together for this CD and recorded a couple of beautiful standards. Hamilton recorded with the Bernhard Pichl Trio back in 2009 resulting in the CD How About You. With this session, Hamilton is paired with Gojković and the proceedings are solid. Gojković’s blend of tone and style on trumpet and flugelhorn is elegant, mellow and hot.

The Europeans never abandoned Jazz, and the Jazz music scene remains alive and well on the other side of the Atlantic. Scott Hamilton, born in Providence, Rhode Island, cognizant of Europe's enthusiastic love of Jazz, has taken his prodigious mastery of the tenor sax to Italy where he now resides.

This Capri CD was the debut of the Clayton-Hamilton Orchestra, a notable L.A.-based big band co-led by bassist John Clayton, altoist Jeff Clayton, and drummer Jeff Hamilton. The 18-piece group has many top soloists, most notably the three co-leaders.However, it is the arrangements of John Clayton that give the orchestra its own sound. Highly recommended. ~ Scott Yanow

The cottage industry that was Dave Hamilton's studio has revealed more high quality soul tracks from the plentiful stash of tapes. This year's offerings include some names not just restricted to the Detroit area. Carolyn Franklin, Aretha's sister, recorded four albums for RCA between 1969 and 1976 (see CDKEND 265). By the early 80s she was semi-retired from secular singing and caring for her father Reverend CL Franklin who had been shot and suffered a five-year coma. His church the New Bethel Missionary Baptist Church was across the road from Dave Hamilton's home and basement studios, which explains how a singing star came to record at the inauspicious location.