Alvin Queen’s Combo Album from Copenhagen

courtesy of Sundance Music

Recently I had the opportunity to download tracks from Alvin Queen’s latest album, Night Train to Copenhagen. In spite of his impressive résumé, this was my first encounter with him, either in performance or on recording. He arrived on the scene in the late Sixties, a particularly adventurous time for performing jazz. Indeed, those times were so adventurous that they prompted me to add jazz albums to my all-classical collection. Queen had been mentored by Elvin Jones (whose work with John Coltrane prompted my first jazz album acquisition); but he may best be remembered as the drummer in the Oscar Peterson Trio, a position he maintained until Peterson’s death in 2007.

On Night Train to Copenhagen Queen himself is the leader, performing with the Swedish pianist Calle Brickman and the Danish bassist Tobias Dall. Peterson is represented by “Goodbye J.D.,” which was first released on his We Get Requests trio album. That album was released in 1964, somewhat before the time that Queen came on the scene; and Peterson’s drummer was Ed Thigpen with Ray Brown on bass. However, this album is less a reflection on Peterson than it is a platform for Queen’s Scandinavian colleagues, reflecting on how, during the second half of the twentieth century, Copenhagen was more welcoming to jazz musicians of color than most of the jazz venues in the United States were.

It is therefore not surprising that this album includes a Danish traditional song among the more familiar standards. The tune is “I skovens dybe stille ro” (in the deep quiet tranquility of the forest). Some listeners will be drawn to it for its slight (if not more) reference to Stephen Foster’s “Oh! Susanna;” but the Danish tune probably predates Foster.

For the most part, however, the focus will shift to the more familiar tunes, all given straightforward accounts and imaginative improvisations by Brickman. I think it is important that Queen never lets his drum-work overwhelm (or even intrude upon) his two partners. The result is fifteen tracks of music that all go down well on the ears and remind those of my generation that the jazz trio repertoire is still alive and well.