Van Morrison's late career tear continues with You're Driving Me Crazy, his third album in seven months. Following the formula of 2017's Roll with the Punches and Versatile - each offered jazz, blues and R&B standards and redone originals - this set offers eight tracks from Morrison's catalog and seven standards. it stands on its own, however, as a collaborative encounter with jazz organist and trumpeter Joey DeFrancesco's hip quartet. They all holed up in a Sausalito studio and completed the recording in only two days, capturing everything in a take or two.
The loose feel is deceptive as the playing is anchored deep in the pocket; it crackles with live-wire intensity. Cole Porter's "Miss Otis Regrets" is framed by a gentle swing, with DeFrancesco's organ and Troy Roberts' smoky tenor saxophone introducing Morrison…
Van Morrison's late career tear continues with You're Driving Me Crazy, his third album in seven months. Following the formula of 2017's Roll with the Punches and Versatile - each offered jazz, blues and R&B standards and redone originals - this set offers eight tracks from Morrison's catalog and seven standards. it stands on its own, however, as a collaborative encounter with jazz organist and trumpeter Joey DeFrancesco's hip quartet. They all holed up in a Sausalito studio and completed the recording in only two days, capturing everything in a take or two.
The loose feel is deceptive as the playing is anchored deep in the pocket; it crackles with live-wire intensity. Cole Porter's "Miss Otis Regrets" is framed by a gentle swing, with DeFrancesco's organ and Troy Roberts' smoky tenor saxophone introducing Morrison…
The funny thing about tributes to Eric Clapton is that Clapton has done them himself, and he would be the first to tell you that his career has been built on his attempts to emulate his own blues heroes, and that would be true to a point, but Clapton was wise enough, or maybe, at times, just lucky enough, to show how those players he loved could be translated into the electric age of rock, and he did it with a tremendous amount of raw elegance and style more often than not. This tribute set doesn't stretch things too far, and while cuts here like James Ryan's version of "Badge" and Brian Tarquin's version of "Sunshine of Your Love" are big, boisterous, and fun to hear, they work largely because of the original and defining riffs that Clapton devised to carry these songs in the first place. The real gem of the disc is a live, horn-filled take on "How Blue Can You Get" (listed as one of two "bonus" tracks here) by B.B. King. One imagines it would be the track Clapton would go to first, next, and last. King makes the song his. No one else here does that.
Van Morrison's late career tear continues with You're Driving Me Crazy, his third album in seven months. Following the formula of 2017's Roll with the Punches and Versatile – each offered jazz, blues and R&B standards and redone originals – this set offers eight tracks from Morrison's catalog and seven standards. it stands on its own, however, as a collaborative encounter with jazz organist and trumpeter Joey DeFrancesco's hip quartet. They all holed up in a Sausalito studio and completed the recording in only two days, capturing everything in a take or two.