Brother Jack (Legends of Acid Jazz)

AMG Review of Brother Jack (Legends of Acid Jazz)

Alex Henderson
All Music Guide

In 1999, Fantasy reissued two of Jack McDuff's classic Prestige dates on a single 78-minute CD for its Legends of Acid Jazz series: Brother Jack (1960) and Goodnight, It's Time to Go (1961). The LP this CD was named after was the organist's first album as a leader and was recorded when he was still in Willis Jackson's employ, while Goodnight was recorded a year and a half later and finds McDuff unveiling a cohesive group that includes Harold Vick on tenor sax, Grant Green on guitar and Joe Dukes on drums. But the soul-jazz/hard bop albums aren't terribly different from one another, and both of them emphasize McDuff's strong points: down-home blues, romantic ballads, and uptempo burners. Accessibility is a high priority on both sessions -- at a time when jazz's avant-garde and post-bop artists were making jazz even more cerebral and uncommercial, McDuff and other B-3 icons provided accessible, groove-oriented music that didn't scare R&B and rock fans away. Critics might have dismissed McDuff's albums because they appealed to a lot of R&B lovers, but in fact, gritty numbers like "McDuff Speaking" and "Godiva Brown" are essentially a 1960s extension of what Lionel Hampton, Jimmie Lunceford, and Count Basie had done in the '30s and '40s. This CD is highly recommended.