Recording of the Week, Steve Davis, 'Bluesthetic'

Steve Davis (or ‘Stevie-D’ as one of his former mentors took to calling him) is a trombonist, composer and educator from New York City, and while he gets around about as much as some of his contemporaries in terms of sideman gigs, Davis has also managed to build up a solid back-catalogue of recordings that would be the envy of any bandleader. While studying under the tutelage of saxophonist Jackie McLean while in Connecticut, McLean was so impressed with Davis’ playing that he put him in touch with Art Blakey, leading him to join the Jazz Messengers in 1989, with whom he played for just one year until Blakey’s death in 1990. Davis was also the trombonist for Chick Corea’s band Origin, and recorded with him from the late ‘90s until the late 2000s – you can hear Davis on albums like 1999’s Change or Live at the Blue Note the year before. Nowadays Davis spends most of his time with his own bands, and this year’s Bluesthetic is his twenty-first studio recording as bandleader, as well as the third made in collaboration with Smoke Jazz Club for their ‘Smoke Sessions’ series of recordings.

Despite having only last recorded with Smoke Sessions a few years back with 2019’s Correlations (read our full review on that here), this time around he’s recruited a totally new group of sidemen. All of the band featured on Bluesthetic are old friends of Davis’, having played with him several times in some capacity over the years. Perhaps the most notable name on the bill, Christian McBride, recruited Davis for his big band project – you can hear Davis amongst the seventeen-piece band since 2011’s The Good Feeling – while both vibraphonist Steve Nelson and guitarist Peter Berenstein played on Davis’ album Vibe Up! back in 1998. Meanwhile Willie Jones III has drummed for Davis on numerous projects over the years, and Davis first met pianist Geoffrey Keezer on the bandstand during his short tenure with the Jazz Messengers. All this is to say that this quintet have quite the chemistry together – McBride even described the recording of the album as a “family session”, given the near-thirty years some of the members have known each other.

And that level of comfort really speaks to the performances throughout Bluesthetic; the band pulls off Davis’ compositions with complete ease, while the improvisatory passages play out with a real ferocity that only comes when you’re given the freedom and comfort from close collaborators. Christian McBride’s dextrous bass solo on ‘Bedford Strolle’ makes for a spicy interlude in the otherwise pretty cool composition, while Steve Nelson’s vibes are undoubtedly the star of the show in many of these solo moments – leaping right to the front of the band, Jones manages to pull off some surprisingly busy fills tastefully without overpowering the band.

All of the tracks here are Davis originals – as is the case with many of his records – and the tunes have that ever-present singable quality that make his trombone lines surprisingly catchy, and from the smoky romance of ‘Faraway Dream’ to the energetic boppy swing of tunes like ‘Encouragement’ or ‘Silver at Sundown’ there’s plenty of variety to chew on. ‘They Wore 44’ stands out as a personal favourite amongst Davis’ pieces here, with a real earworm of a head melody kicking the tune off and left-field modulation to boot – clocking in at almost 8 and a half minutes it’s also one of the more ambitious tracks on the record.

If you’re after some cool New York swing, Bluesthetic has it in spades. The quintet’s chemistry is about as chill as you can get without falling out of line; and while Davis is obviously leading the charge here, he doesn’t totally dominate the proceedings, giving his exemplary bandmates plenty of chances to shine.