Trumpeter and composer Terell Stafford is Temple University’s Director of Jazz and Instrumental Studies and leads the award-winning Temple University Jazz Band. The inspiration for this project, Without You, No Me, dates to the bittersweet moment of taking top honors in the inaugural Jack Rudin Jazz Championship at Jazz at Lincoln Center on January 19. 2020, the same night Stafford received the news that Philly jazz hero, friend, and legendary saxophonist Jimmy Heath had passed at age 93. Stafford had toured together with Heath, a mentor of his, in the Dizzy Gillespie Alumni All-Star Big Band. The news hit hard, and this album is Stafford’s way of honoring the legend, and the city of Philadelphia in the process, the latter amplified by the presence of two Philly greats, bassist Christian McBride and organist Joey DeFrancesco.
This is the second new album released by the Temple University Jazz Band since the onset of the pandemic. The first, titled Covid Sessions: A Social Call, was recorded remotely in students’ homes around the country with innovative portable sound rigs. This album, Without You, No Me, comes close to a regular studio recording, as most of it was done in the Temple Performing Arts Center in April of 2021 with social distancing and ample protocols in place. The portable rigs were used to capture the contributions of McBride and DeFranceso.
The album resonates as one of the bluesiest big band albums in recent memory. It begins with saxophonist Todd Bashore’s composition, “Passing of the Torch,” in honor of Heath, who was Bashore’s teach at Queens College. Later there is another Heath-centric tribute, “The Voice of the Saxophone,” where Bashore solos, The title track was originally commissioned by Dizzy Gillespie and acknowledges the father figure relationship Stafford had with Heath via the leader’s emotive solo.
Yet, as mentioned, the project goes beyond simply honoring Heath as it pays tribute to other fallen Philly musicians such as the tenorist Bootsie Barnes, honored in “Bootsie,” composed by saxophonist and bandleader Jack Saint Clair, a Temple alumnus. The swinging tune has a relaxed quality meant to honor Barnes, a man of few words but sharp wit. Saint Clair also arranged the standard “Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone” and “The Blues Ain’t Nothin’ (But Some Pain),” a piece from another Philly great, the late organist Shirley Scott, with whom Barnes often played. The vocalist who belts out both deep blues tracks is Danielle Dougherty.
Organist Joey DeFrancesco’s unmistakable rapid-run organ mastery colors his original, the rollicking “In That Order,’ arranged by pianist Bill Cunliffe. Christian McBride, for his part, composed “The Wise Old Owl” in tribute to the late basketball coach, John Chaney, who led Temple to 17 NCAA Tournaments in his 24-year stint at the University. As in the other tributes, the composer tries to capture personality traits through the music, in this case, the drama and graceful demeanor of Chaney, who could go from calm to strongly impassioned in just seconds, with a loosened tie and untucked shirt. McBride, leading with his bowed bass intro, thereby runs the spectrum from elegance to highly kinetic in the piece. McBride then engages his upright bass in animated dialogue with the full ensemble in John Clayton’s arrangement of the classic “I Can’t Give you Anything But Love.” On the final tune, DeFrancesco and McBride, lifelong friends spar in Juan Tizol’s romping “Perdido,” arranged by Philly living legend saxophonist Larry McKenna.
Big, bold, brassy, bluesy, and warm in the right places – Terell helms a fitting tribute not only to Heath but to Philadelphia, a city that has and continues to produce jazz legends.
