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ROB SUDDUTH
Just One Of Those Things (A-Records)
Reviewed by Shaun Dale
San Francisco Bay Area tenor man Rob Sudduth has played in just about every jazz, soul, rock and pop configuration imaginable, leading up to his current regular gig with Huey Lewis & The News. He continues to pursue a variety of jazz projects on the side, though, and on Just One Of Those Things he assembles a first rate quintet to take a look at the Great American Songbook through the filter of Francis Albert Sinatra.
Sudduth, along with Marty Wehner (trombone), Steve Cardenas (guitar), Trevor Dunn (bass) and Kenny Wollenson (drums), approaches nine standards he selected from the Sinatra discography, adopting Sinatra's phrasing rather than the classic instrumental arrangements of his recordings as the blueprint for interpretation. It's a dauntingly ambitious, not to say pretentious, road for any musician to take. Claiming to be inspired by Frank Sinatra is tampering with a pretty potent pop culture icon, and the outcomes are likely to be extreme - extremely good or devastatingly bad. Sudduth & co. pull it off with aplomb.
It works for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the song selection. For the most part, Sudduth points his sax at songs that are recognizable as part of the Sinatra legacy, but not as cornerstones of it. The tracks probably best known by the general audience would be Cole Porter's "Just One Of Those Things", which works very well here, and "Something Stupid," which also happens to be the weakest tune and least successful interpretation on the disk. But there are more than enough wonderful moments on the disc to make up for the occasional glitch, and this is another example of a highly accessible jazz album that blows circles around the "smooth jazz" compromises that so many make in search of commercial success. This one deserves wider attention than it will probably receive, I fear, but then, that's just one of those things...
Track List:
Violets For Your Furs * Too Marvelous For Words * April In Paris * Something Stupid * Goodbye * Just One Of Those Things * Only The Lonely * Wives And Lovers * Please Be Kind
© 1999 - Shaun Dale