Marty Cook Group: RED, WHITE, BLACK & BLUEEnja 5067 (Germany) [LP/CD], Tutu 888 174 (Germany) [CD]
Tracks: 1. Spirit War 2. It’s About Time 3. Love Life 4. Grab Bag 5. Sweet / No Regrets Now 6. Mr. D.C. (J. Pepper) 7. Trapeze (Claudine François) 8. Face The Nation
Personnel: Marty Cook, trombone; Jim Pepper, tenor and soprano saxophone; Ed Schuller, bass; John Betsch, drums; Mal Waldron, piano on 1, 3, 4, 7
7, 8 on the CD edition only Rec. November 23-24, 1987, Trixi Studios, Munich
As long-playing shellack, this recording was greatly in demand and as a compact disc, it's a jazz classic. Marty Cook's illustrious compositions, the singing, melodic saxophone lines of the wonderful Jim Pepper, sometimes garnished with the magic touches of the great old Fakir on the piano, Mal Waldron; and upon the hand-woven carpet of rhythm made by the unbeatable bass and drums tandem Ed Schuller and John Betsch, the climate for primary combustion comes into being; what takes place is a feast, a banquet! Marty Cook succeeds in bringing together the various artistic temperaments of his fellow musicians, the "colours of jazz": Red, white, black and blue! Get up with it!
"If Ray Anderson is way out on his own, Marty Cook must be leading the contemporary trombone pack. Whatever their respective merits, there is certainly no quantitative comparison to their respective outputs. Anderson is everywhere, while Cook's most noted recorded work before the mid-1980s was a too brief appearance...!" So says the newest issue of the Penguin Guide To Jazz.
The musical statement of the album stands as a symbol for the wide stream of various colours in Cook's music; he has a genial understanding of how to give his fellow players the right position, from which they acquire freedom unimaginable; each one of them responds thankfully, with an almost inconceivable kind of expressiveness in their solos.
