Warriors (JLP 1001009)
The Cookers

WHAT a band! The pick of the post-bop brilliance, all of the septet are leaders in their own right and veterans of many a prime session. “The Cookers” is right: their sound is the food of jazz tastiness from many a context over the past five decades. For between them are over 250 years of luminous musicianship and more than 1,000 recordings.

First the horns: Billy Harper, born in Houston in 1943, he arrived in The Apple with his tenor in 1966, found work with Art Blakey, Max Roach and Gil Evans and soon became famed for his harsh, gospel-rooted Texan sound. His long-time bandmate, the crackling Eddie Henderson (born 1940), combines his trumpet power with psychiatry and owes his birth on the horn to a stay Miles Davis made at his parents’ house in the 1950s, and much of his early exposure to his work with the Herbie Hancock Sextet of the early 1970s.

Then Craig Handy of Oakland, CA, who plays alto saxophone and flute on this album. Another Blakey Jazz messenger alumnus and ex-bandmate of Roy Haynes, Elvin Jones and Abdullah Ibrahim, I remember him playing with Freddie Hubbard’s last band to tour England in 1997, alongside New Yorker David Weiss who did most of the arranging for that band and who has also achieved a remarkable amalgam by assembling The Cookers.

The pianist is George Cables, born in 1944 in Brooklyn, a superb solo and trio performer, but who was also renowned for his accompanying some of the great saxophonists from Sonny Rollins and Joe Henderson to Art Pepper and Dexter Gordon. On bass is Cecil McBee, born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1935, his beat as delving and authoritative as any in jazz, and an anchor of bands led by Jacky McLean, Wayne Shorter, Charles Lloyd and Yusef Lateef. And finally, the consummate drummer born in washington DC in 1940, Billy Hart, a part of the sound of fellow masters from Jimmy Smith, Wes Montgomery and McCoy Tyner.

All together, quite a sevensome. And this is how Weiss characterises them and their records: “This CD is called ‘Warriors’ because this is how I look at these great men. They came up at a time when this music was at its most vital and exciting and was part of something epic and historic yet they are still going strong with the same freedom, passion and intensity.”

The earthy riff which begins the opener, Hubbard’s opus The Core, leads into some forceful Henderson before Harper’s carping chorus tears up the theme. Weiss is more burnished for his solo and Cables sprints through his notes, along spirited sonic bathways before Hart’s crashing drums lead into the denouement.

Spookerella is a Cables tune, an outing for the birdsong of Handy’s keening flute and the composer’s own weaving keys.

Close To You Alone is a ballad by McBee — all these musicians are skilled tune-writers too — lent to Handy’s tender alto, and blown with a strongly gentle lyricism.

Harper wrote Priestess for a 1977 Gil Evans orchestral album of the same name. The track lasted for 20 minutes and featured saxophone solos by Arthur Blythe and David Sanborn. This time it is Harper himself, fiercely beautiful in full Texan Mettle, and Handy’s alto adds its own gentle lyricism.

Her Soul is Cables’s waltz from his Sweet Rita Suite, featuring Handy’s flute before Henderson enters with piercing, transcendent phrases and Cables guides Handy back to the serenity of his theme.

In 1973 Harper led his first solo album session for the independent Strata East label, Capra Black. He reprises the title theme here with a long, gutteral chorus of excitation riding over the other horns, his sound roaring for freedom. Weiss reaches skyward with a crystalline eloquence and Cables’s solo notes leap and dance from his keys, propelled by Hart’s springing skins.

The final two tunes are McBee’s own. Ladybugg is Henderson’s track, his muted horn full of the blues, aching and resonant, followed by the composer’s cavernous twang. The more upbeat U Phoria has a testifying chorus from an earnest Harper, Cables scuttling through his solo with improvising fire and Hart’s drums pounding these formidable warriors’ album to a final, and hopefully temporary, jazz peace.