The Big Bad Bones to Debut on Summit Records

from the Amazon.com Web page for this album

This Friday Summit Records is scheduled to release what appears to be the debut album of a group called The Big Bad Bones. The name refers to a front line consisting entirely of trombones, one bass and three tenors. The ensemble was conceived and founded by bass trombonist Steve Wilson and tenor trombonist Pete Madsen. The other two trombonists are Brett Stamps, who is composer-in-residence and is responsible for all ten tracks on the album, and Scott Whitfield, the only “coastal” member of the group, since he is based in Los Angeles. (The “geographical center” of the group seems to be in Omaha, Nebraska; and Summit itself is based in Arizona.) Rhythm is provided by keyboardist Ben Tweedt, Mark Haar on both acoustic and electric bass, and drummer Doug Montera. The title of the album is Emergency Vehicle Blues; and, as is usually the case, Amazon.com has created a Web page for taking pre-orders.

That Web page describes the repertoire as “original funk, swing, samba, light rock, and boogie.” The title track, which opens the album, also adds an element of wit which will likely be expected by many listeners: the use of trombone glissando to evoke the siren of an emergency vehicle. Most of the tracks amount to a “Stamps family album,” inspired by the composer’s wife and grandchildren. There is thus a generous share of human affection behind most of the tracks; but, from the listener’s point of view, that affection emerges as an almost-bland (the “almost” due almost entirely to Montera) sameness.

There is a certain irony to that sameness. By virtue of its slide, the trombone has a long and highly distinguished legacy of uniqueness, going back the secular dances of the fifteenth century leading up to the polyphonic diversity of the canzonas that Giovanni Gabrieli composed to be performed throughout the entire architecture of St Mark’s Basilica in Venice. By the time we get to the early twentieth century, the instrument had become vital in any number of jazz genres; and that jazzy rhetoric even found its way into the trombone solo that Maurice Ravel provided in his “Bolero.”

In other words there is much more to the trombone than “meets the ear” in Stamps’ compositions. Nevertheless, this is a debut album. Given that the members are distributed across the United States, it may take more than a bit of time before the group begins to exploit the diverse potential of the trombone itself, harnessing that potential in the interest of keeping jazz contemporary.