Music Monday: Roy Hargrove, Phineas Newborn, and Mark Masters Plays Sam Rivers

It was a decent week for music despite having too much going on. I was able to listen to some older stuff, some new stuff, and the late, great Roy Hargrove on what would have been his October 16th birthday. 

I had not heard Hargroves albums with Jimmy Cobb, Ronnie Matthews on piano, and Peter Washington on bass. It was great to hear him play some jazz standards with a very accomplished ensemble on Cobb’s Corner (2007). I particularly enjoyed “My Foolish Heart,” but the entire album reminded me to Hargrove’s amazing sound: 

For some reason, I decided that I needed to listen to some vigorous, high-energy piano and I put on some Phineas Newborn Jr. Despite his acclaim as a technical pianist, I never really warmed to his pyrotechnic style. That said, when I feel like some exuberant piano, Newborn fits the bill and his Harlem Blues (1969) is fantastic and offers a kind of old school style that scratched my itch:

(By the way, you can listen to all the Phineas Newborn Jr. albums in this playlist. Six and half hours!)

Sam Rivers has featured any number of times on my blog and I very much admire his saxophone work in the 1960s and his big band work in the 1970s and 1980s. Mark Masters, of whose work I’ve only ever been vaguely aware, arranged a selection of Sam Rivers’s compositions for his big band. It’s good even if it lacks a bit of the edge of the best Rivers’s big band performances.  

Finally, I’d be remiss not to mention the passing of D’Angelo (plus he’s a Richmond, Virginia guy). I didn’t listen to his music much, but Black Messiah was in pretty consistent rotation a decade ago. I did not know this track that feature D’Angelo and Hargrove, Macy Grey, and Femi Kuti (among others) performing the Fela Kuti classic “Water No Get Enemy.”