At the 2023 Newport Jazz Festival, Christian McBride introduced Charles McPherson by saying, “The last time he was here, he was playing with Charles Mingus.” Listening to McPherson’s energetic performance that followed and then revisiting those Mingus albums from the early ‘60s a week or two later, it was clear the altoist’s lyricism, swing, inherent feel for bebop, and the vitality expressed in his improvisational solos had not at all diminished. If anything, the rough edges have long been smoothed out. Somehow jazz elders just have a deeper ‘feel’ for the music, or maybe it’s that they play through a halo effect of reverential respect and adoration from the audience.
Reverence, his first release for Smoke Records, is further evidence of such. This is McPherson’s working quintet, the same unit that performed at Newport that afternoon – fiery trumpeter Terell Stafford, pianist Jeb Patton, bassist David Wong, and drummer Billy Drummond. This, too, is a live recording from November of 2023, just three months after Newport Jazz. McPherson, like so many jazz greats, grew up in Detroit and dedicated the album to his lifelong friend and mentor, the late influential pianist Barry Harris. Yet, this is not a tribute album. Only the last track points directly to Harris as the six contain three other originals and sublime, chilling renditions of the standards “Come Rain or Come Shine” and “Old Folks.”
“The Surge” opens with a minor blues, with Stafford taking the first turn, reaching ever higher in his solo before yielding to McPherson, who reveals his penchant to play ‘out’ and proceeds to play each chorus differently, with a fierce attack that avoids cliches. Patton locks into his bluesy turn as is indicative of these lengthy tracks, ample opportunity for each musician to freely improvise and express. On “Blues for Lonnie in Three,” for his high school Detroit colleague, bebop trumpeter Lonnie Hillyer, McPherson issues a clinic in controlled improvisation while Stafford goes stratospheric. The rhythm section plays with heated verve on this one, never letting go of the rope. The playful finale has a calvary-like bugle call, no less. “Dynamic Duo,” resembling “I Got Rhythm,” is written for pianist Patton and bassist Wong, longtime collaborators in both Patton’s bands and back to the Heath Brothers. Oh, and Drummond is the third party in this series of short, riveting conversations that eventually yield to a bristling Stafford and wildly expressive McPherson.
Album highlight is “Come Rain or Come, Shine,” the oft-covered ballad rendered here in a deep bluesy reading that makes every note just ooze with goosebump-inducing chills. McPherson’s in-the-moment playing is remarkable. He’s not the kind of player to rely on the tried and true but savors each of these opportunities to create something new. The call-and-response between he and Stafford is arresting, but soon takes a back seat to McPherson’s spiraling soli. “Old Folks,” a slightly lesser-known standard, evokes late-night jazz club nostalgia, with Stafford initially extensively stating the melody before McPherson plays in a warm, yearning fashion, inspiring Stafford to be even more dynamic in his return passage. “Ode to Barry” fittingly has the most bebop sheen in the program, McPherson emulating Harris’s harmonic colorings in this vigorous send-off. Clearly, the album breathes a sense of tradition but with an equal balance toward improvisation, which is anything but staid. One can’t possibly play any freer within these constraints.
McPherson has this vote as the next NEA Jazz Master. That honor is overdue.
