52nd Street Themes

Why is Joe Lovano's retrobop revival record different from all the other retrobop revival records? Because 52nd Street Themes, which is dominated by five Tadd Dameron tunes, shakes off the musty museum reverence of such efforts and makes a very personal statement. Lovano's two most influential mentors in his native Cleveland--his father Tony and the album's arranger Willie "Face" Smith--both played with Dameron. So when Lovano plays a Dameron piece, he's not merely studying history, he's expressing the emotional debt of a son to a father, of a student to a teacher. Moreover, the saxophonist and leader has the kind of thick, creamy tone that does justice to the seductive melodies created by Dameron, Thelonious Monk, and Billy Strayhorn. And yet Lovano is a thorough modernist; no sooner does he evoke these old tunes than he pulls them apart and puts them back together again. There are seven nonet pieces (with Smith's wonderful, Mingus-like horn charts), two sextets, a quartet, a trio, a duo, and an unaccompanied sax solo. This is what Lester Young might have sounded like had he lived long enough to become David Murray. --Geoffrey Himes