Which jazz pianist who recorded his first album in 1962 went on to have a significant influence on contemporary music in the decades to follow? If you answered ‘Herbie Hancock,’ you’d be correct. Same if you answered with ‘Bob James.’ And also like Hancock, James is still very much in the game.
Espresso (August 31, 2018 from Evolution Music Group) is slated to be James’ first release as a leader since Urban Flamingo from 2006(!) and a sort-of return to where he’d begun, leading a piano trio with some new originals and old covers as he did with Bold Conceptions. But while James is feeling nostalgic, there are limits to his nostalgia, else he wouldn’t have picked dynamic players like Billy Kilson (drums) and the young, up-and-coming Michael Palazzolo (acoustic bass) to fill out his latest trio.
James has made some successful returns to his roots before (Straight Up and Take It From The Top) but he’s best known in the contemporary jazz arena, making a series of lite funk-jazz records in the mid-70s that were classics of the sub-genre and as one of the mainstays in the smooth jazz supergroup Fourplay since the early 90s. The Fourplay gig, various collaborative projects with David Sanborn and Nathan East and other musical endeavors have kept him plenty busy, and he didn’t really need to do this. But that was before being inspired to take another stab at leading a date following weeklong gig with Kilson and Palazzolo at New York’s Blue Note club last year.