Larry Fuller’s Recent Jazz Trio Album

courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz Communications

For some reason or another, the latest album of straight-ahead jazz from pianist Larry Fuller slipped my attention when it was released this past May. However, as they say, better late than never. Overjoyed is a trio album from Capri Records on which Fuller is joined by Hassan Shakur on bass and Lewis Nash on drums. The album has two Fuller originals, “Jane’s Theme” and “The Mooch.” The latter should not be confused with “The Mooche,” the early down-and-dirty jazz classic that Duke Ellington composed with Irving Mills. Some may think that Fuller was out to make fun of a former member of Donald Trump’s administration; but my own opinion is that he was playing around with the idea of a “flip side” for the Ellington classic.

More striking is the diversity of sources that account for the remaining ten tracks on the album. On the pop side the songwriting duo of Ray Evans and Jay Livingston is honored with two of their best-known offerings, “Mona Lisa” and “Never Let Me Go;” and they are complemented on the funkier side by Stevie Wonder’s “Overjoyed” and Preston “Red” Foster’s “Got My Mo-Jo Working.” Those with more traditional expectations for a jazz trio will be satisfied by George Gershwin’s “How Long Has This Been Going On,” Ray Bryant’s “Cubano Chant,” Oscar Peterson’s “Bossa Beguine,” and two jazz composers, neither of whom were pianists, guitarist Wes Montgomery (“Fried Pies”) and Ray Brown (“Lined With A Groove”). (As might be expected, one hears a lot from Shakur in that last track.) The one discovery for me on this album was the track by Richard Evans, who composed all the tracks on the Ahmad Jamal Macanudo album and conducted the backup orchestra. Fuller’s trio plays “Bossa Nova Do Marilla,” which was one of the tracks on that album.

In the midst of all of this diversity, Fuller consistently comes up with new approaches to invention, each entirely suited to the tune he is playing. I have to say that I felt at least a bit that his own music was being upstaged by the context in which his two tunes were situated on the album. (They were played consecutively between Brown and Gershwin.) Ultimately, however, it is Fuller’s piano work that draws and then holds attention, not only through that inventiveness but also through the compelling chemistry emerging from the constitution of the trio as a whole.