[CD Review] Anthony E. Nelson, Jr.’s ‘Swinging Sunset’ (Musicstand Records)
When Anthony Nelson was a kid in Newark, and singing in a Plainfield choir, he was taken to a jazz club in Orange to hear keyboard legend Jimmy McGriff. He never forgot that. So after studying clarinet, sax and flute at the prestigious Jazz Institute of New Jersey, and after being a sideman where he would listen and learn, he set on his solo path to perform and record. For his fifth album, this multi-instrumentalist-composer is in tribute to the classic organ trios of the ‘50s and ‘60s. With Hammond B-3 organist Kyle Koehler and drummer Cecil Brooks III, he dissects and rearranges Neal Hefti’s 1965 “Girl Talk”; goes the samba route for his own “Uno Mas Por Roberto”; and does a roots-reverent version of Stanley Turrentine’s 1960 “Minor Chant.” He gets mellow on the 1965 Barbra Streisand hit “Why Did I Choose You” (which he first heard on a 1997 posthumous Marvin Gaye album). He goes gospel for “Walk With Me” and gives Sonny Rollins a nod by covering 1964’s “Three Little Words.”
(Advertisement)