ROCK • A • RAMA
CHICO FREEMAN — Tradition in Transition (Elektra/Musician):: If you're hip to the toweringly majestic 'Jackie-ing,' one of Thelonius Monk's obscurer magnum opuses, you've absolutely gotta hear the version here. Dunno who actually did the arrangement (coulda been Chico but more likely it was Jack DeJohnette), but the junior high school oompah band treatment they give it is as pure-Monk in spirit as these ears have ever heard in a Monk cover.
ROCK A RAMA
CHICO FREEMAN — Tradition in Transition (Elektra/Musician):: If you're hip to the toweringly majestic 'Jackie-ing,' one of Thelonius Monk's obscurer magnum opuses, you've absolutely gotta hear the version here. Dunno who actually did the arrangement (coulda been Chico but more likely it was Jack DeJohnette), but the junior high school oompah band treatment they give it is as pure-Monk in spirit as these ears have ever heard in a Monk cover. Plus DeJohnette (on piano, not his more usual drums) inserts totally Monkish notes behind other people's solos, something even most Monk-derived full-time pianists are generally (for some reason) afraid to do. Rest of the LP is Chico, basically an overrated pseudo-modernist who occupies the same commercial space once controlled by people like Charles Lloyd and Wayne Shorter, blowing more thoughtfully, less glibly than is usually his stock-in-trade. If this was Downbeat: 4% stars. R.M.
