Recording of the Week,
Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio, 'Cold as Weiss'
The Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio has been been kicking out it’s own brand of classic Hammond B3 driven funky soul-jazz for the past decade, with Cold as Weiss being the group’s third long-player, and the second on Colemine Records. The title is a nice way to welcome on board ace drummer Daniel Weiss, whose tight breaks really help power this excellent collection. This is an organ trio in the truest sense, with Lamarr’s dextrous pedal work replacing the acoustic or electric bass, bringing that super-tight level of torque that Jimmy Smith and Richard ‘Groove’ Holmes once owned. It’s a long and noble tradition that stretches back to the infancy of the instrument, and the bars and nightclubs of the 1950s, when club owners realised they could fill a room with a booming sound far more efficiently, and cheaply, by installing one of these huge instruments, rather than paying for a full band. And listening to Lamarr and co. cranking out the tunes here makes one wish there was a dancefloor nearby.
‘Pull Your Pants Up’ throws us straight into the funk with an attitude that The Meters would be proud of, and a descending organ line from Lamarr that echoes the ‘Starsky and Hutch’ theme. After spending the first couple of minutes establishing the groove, Lamarr (a completely self-taught musician, it’s worth noting) let’s rip with a majestic-yet-dirty solo, all the more impressive for the control with which he executes it. The ‘Pants’ of the title actually belong to guitarist Jimmy James. “On every DLO3 tour, at some point, we have to tell Jimmy James to pull his pants up,” Lamarr has explained, “After being blinded by his backside over and over and over again, we decided to write a song about it!”.
Although it’s Lamarr’s name on the tin, it’s the interdependence between the three members that really impresses. Sure, Jimmy James is more than happy to play Steve Cropper to Lamarr’s Booker T, locking in so satisfyingly with Weiss backbeat, but he’s ready to let rip with a tasty Hendrix-esque, psychedelic flavoured solo when called to, especially on ‘Don’t Worry ‘Bout What I Do’, or the wah-wah rhythm guitar on ‘This Is Who I Is’. Consisting mostly of excellent originals, there is space here for a breezy cover of Leon Ware's 1972 ‘I Wanna Be Where You Are’, originally written for Michael Jackson. Again, for it’s sheer finger snappin’ jubilance one can’t help comparing the unit to the Stax house-band’s glory days, and marvel at Lamarr’s ability to lay down a rock solid bassline with his feet, and yet be completely free to float away lyrically up top.
At 6 minutes the mid-paced ‘Big TT’s Blues’ is the longest track on the album, allowing the band to properly dig in. Lamarr’s blues chops are in fine form here, and he’s really exploring the sounds of his B3, pulling out all the stops (excuse the pun) to get the earthiest sounds he can wrest out of his machine. After patiently laying down staccato rhythms for half of the tune, James peels off an outstanding solo that would make Muddy Waters proud. And even when Weiss is laying down a fairly simple rhythm, he’s always keeping it alive with little nuances, and tracks like ‘Slip’n’Slide’ give him ample room to shuffle, shimmy and fill to his heart’s content.
Is Cold as Weiss at the cutting edge of jazz or funk? Absolutely not. But that’s not the point. This is super-tight jazz-funk, built upon genuinely memorable, original tunes – and in terms of purely enjoyable, celebratory music-making, it’s hard to beat. So here’s a suggestion for Quentin Tarantino or Spike Lee: next time you want some dirty funk to set a mood, rather than digging out ‘Cissy Strut’ or ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ yet again, for the nth time, give Mr Lamarr and associates a call and have it delivered fresh.
Matt Groom - Head of Jazz
