George Benson / Joe Dukes / Red Holloway / Jack McDuff Soulful Drums... CD

/Joe Dukes/George Benson/Red Holloway.
2 LPs on 1 CD: THE SOULFUL DRUMS OF JOE DUKES WITH THE BROTHER JACK MCDUFF QUARTET (1966)/HOT BARBEQUE (1966).
Includes 1 bonus track performed by the Nomos, the nucleus of which was Jack McDuff's quartet.
Personnel includes: Brother Jack McDuff (organ); Red Holloway (alto & tenor saxophones); Alvin "Red " Tyler (baritone saxophone); George Benson (guitar); Tommy Shelvin (bass); Joe Dukes (drums).
Recorded between February 6, 1964 and October 19, 1965. Includes liner notes by Robert Levin and Lew Futterman.
Personnel: Jack McDuff (organ); Joe Dukes (drums); George Benson (guitar); Red Holloway (alto saxophone, tenor saxophone); Alvin "Red" Tyler (baritone saxophone).
Audio Remasterer: Kirk Felton.
Liner Note Author: Lew Futterman.
Recording information: Englewood Cliffs, NJ (02/06/1964-10/19/1965); Los Angeles, CA (02/06/1964-10/19/1965).
One of the latest in the Original Jazz Classics' two-fer series has the greatest of all Jack McDuff's organ groups assembled for two different albums on this CD, both from 1966. This is a partial issue of a number of albums all issued by the same group. Guitarist George Benson, saxophonist Red Holloway, and Joe Dukes all had records issued under their names by Prestige. The first six tracks were issued under the original title Soulful Drums of Joe Dukes, and the last half under McDuff's name and the title Hot Barbeque. It is fitting that these two sessions be reissued together, with gorgeous remastered sound, because they are two of the funkiest, deep groove jazz organ records of all time. The reason is simple, and is evident from the opening cut, the title, that McDuff was an in-the-pocket player. He liked to keep it greasy, full of soul, and walked the line right between jazz and blues. With a front line that included Holloway and Benson and often Alvin "Red" Tyler, he needed a drummer who was more than a timekeeper; he needed someone who could draw attention to the bottom end of the spectrum. Joe Dukes was an under-appreciated jazz and R&B drummer and was just the man for the job. For one thing, time was an element of the propulsion of force. There was no such thing as a 4/4 time in Dukes' world, as revealed in any track you care to select here from "Mookah the D.J." to the Memphis soul-flavored "Moanin' Bench" to the stomp of "The Three Day Thang"; Dukes shifted forced time through his kit by a series of tom-tom rolls and high hat skitters and skeins of cross rhythms that held McDuff in check and let him lead the band. Dukes was the key to the band's deep, funky danceable sound and its architect for players like Benson and Holloway to solo their asses off. His steaming tom-tom roll on "My Three Sons" has Benson saying catch up from the word go, slashing out three-chord runs to keep time. McDuff, relaxed as ever, keeps it all grooving with just enough soul to make it blues and just enough open-ended choral chromaticism to make it jazz. This tune jams its way through four key changes and obliterates both the jump blues it was taken from and the hard bebop stylings its harmonic structure was built upon. Red Tyler's solo here is one of the fastest and deepest blue he ever played. Hot Barbeque is the swampier of the two albums, wider and sweatier on the funk end of the spectrum -- after all, it was 1966 and every cat on Blue Note was trying the same stuff. Holloway carries the McDuff/Dukes shuffle through the roof with his solo and Benson comps with fat chords laid on thick as fried onions. His own solo is less about how many notes but which ones he can bend to make them sit at the bottom of this groove. There is the easy strut of tunes like "The Party's Over," where McDuff indulges his lyrical side and Benson paints him in with lovely augmented sevenths in an ornate blues, but it's more in the sprints like "Briar Patch," driven by Dukes' bass drum and tom-tom cut-time rhythm doubled over into 8/8 and shimmied 16th notes into hiDown Beat (2/02, p.56) - 3 stars out of 5 - "...Joe Dukes' drumming moves through the first 6 of 14 tunes here, the band almost serving as a backdrop to [his] solos-through-riffs style of playing..."