Adventures in Crate Digging: Urbie Green - The Fox

I found this at Antone's yesterday for $4.99. It's unlikely I would've given it a second look, but for the fact that I happened to notice the CTI logo in the lower right corner. My copy was a white label copy, in pretty good shape. The record was dusty, but a quick listen didn't reveal any skips, and the cover looks fine.

The trombone is not a sexy instrument. Take it from someone who played it in the fourth grade band. It can't create the acrobatics of wild John Coltrane runs or the piercing tones of a Freddie Hubbard trumpet solo. The need to move the slide back and forth over a long distance to change the pitch makes it much more ponderous than other wind instruments to play, and its smooth tone makes it difficult to sound anything but cool and relaxed. In the ego-driven and virtuoso-heavy world of jazz, then, it is no surprise that trombones do not show up much in the post-big band era. Enter Urbie Green, born in Alabama in 1926. He had a string of albums dating back to the 1950's, and continued recording into the late 1990's.

The album is a 1976 release produced by Creed Taylor, the second of Green's two CTI records in the mid-70's. It's a mixture of mid-tempo disco-influenced tracks, haunting sparse pieces, and dirtier funk numbers. The ensemble varied on the tracks, but it usually included 6 or 8 members, mostly standard rhythm instruments, with the odd soprano sax, yazz flute, or harmonica player thrown in. There is a lot of 70's studio magic used to good effect by Taylor, but the instrumentation itself is all acoustic.

I wouldn't call any of these tracks standouts in the CTI catalog, mainly due to a lack of interesting solos. Green is clearly talented at his instrument, but superimposing 1950's west coast jazz riffs on top of 70's groove-based jazz has limited mileage. It definitely has some sample potential, but it's destined for laid back sounding tracks. The amorphous tracks with no percussion have a few little runs that could make for a decent Black Milk-sounding beat. It wasn't a bad use of $5, but I didn't feel like I'd found anything earth shattering either. From a listening perspective, though, it's worth a spin if you happen to find one in a bin near you.