The Night of the Cookers by: Ken Pickering

"The Night of The Cookers”

The Cookers - Performance Works - June 22, 2012

By: Ken Pickering / Artistic Director

An all-star band assembled by trumpeter David Weiss, The Cookers are the crème de la crème of the hard bop scene and beyond. I don't want to categorize or put this music into a box, but I do want to give you a stylistic indication of how the music could sound and what might be in store for if you wisely attend their opening night performances at Performance Works on June 22^nd.

The reality is that these cats are some of the hardest swinging in the music. Their handle - that old cliched jazz descriptor – The Cookers – really does nail it with this band. Word is they were thinking of the Freddie Hubbard Blue Note classic The Night of the Cookers when they were naming the group. Makes sense to me! Although the band – as an entity is not that well known, most of the members of the band most certainly are.

This is a ridiculous band – I just cannot over emphasize how heavy these musicians are – The Cookers include: Billy Harper, Craig Handy (saxophones), Eddie Henderson, David Weiss (trumpets), George Cables (piano), Cecil McBee (bass) and Billy Hart (drums).  Collectively these musicians have credits that are staggering, in some cases going back to the 60’s. Check out this live clip of the band with a wickedly hot Billy Harper tenor solo!

I recently read in an interview (Ethan Iverson's Do the Math blog) that Ethan (The Bad Plus) did with BillyHart where Billy recounted that he was actually offered a drum chair with John Coltrane when Elvin Jones was cueing up to leave the band. He refused thinking he wasn’t ready to take that big step. Whoa! You've got to read this interview - I learned a ton of stuff about Mr. Hart that I didn't know. His experiences with Shirley Horn, Wes Montgomery, Eddie Harris, Pharoah Sanders, Stan Getz, Herbie Hancock and plenty more. It's an incredible history lesson and clearly Ethan Iverson is a great interviewer / writer. His blog is a must read - and he's a great pianist too! Billy Hart has played with so many greats as well as establishing himself as an occasional leader - with numerous albums to his credit including a recommended new ECM All Our Reasons. Check out this trailer for Billy's new ECM  (with Ethan Iverson).

Only a few years after the Trane story, both Billy Hart and trumpeter Eddie Henderson joined Herbie Hancock’s mind-blowing Mwandishi band, thought by many to the best ensemble of his multi-faceted career. Mwandishi was a gorgeous album but it gave no indication of the power they projected off the bandstand in live performance.  As a young lad, I was lucky to hear them at the old Cellar on Watson St. (circa 1972). Smokin'! There's no recorded albums of the live band, but there are You Tube clips. One is from a performance in Molde, Norway circa 1971that I've just got to put up - it's a town I know well (the festival is still great and programmed by my very good friend Jan Ole Otnaes) plus I've stayed at the hotel in the clip! Another is from an air shot in France circa 1972 - playing Toys featuring a nice Eddie Henderson solo.

Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi Band in Molde Norway - circa 1971

Billy Harper worked with Gil Evans, Max Roach, Art Blakey and most notably Lee Morgan, one of the greatest trumpeters in jazz until his untimely death in in 1972. In the 70’s Billy Harper emerged as a leader and recorded a string of awesome albums for labels like Strata East (check this tune), Black Saint (Croquet Ballet - 1975) and Japanese Denon (Soran-Bushi with Billy Hart) that featured his passionate unmistakable post Trane saxophone sound. Harper is one of our unsung and hugely underrated jazz heroes.

Cecil McBee’s credits also go back to that halcyon era, having recorded with Jackie McLean, Wayne Shorter, Sam Rivers, Andrew Hill, Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane. By 1969 pianist George Cables had toured with Sonny Rollins and in the early 70’s recorded with Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard and Woodie Shaw. A generation or more younger, saxophonist Craig Handy has played with Mingus Big Band / Dynasty, Roy Haynes, Abdullah Ibrahim, Betty Carter and Elvin Jones. David Weiss cut his teeth with Clifford Jordan, Mulgrew Miller and Roy Hargrove to name a few stalwarts and is the man largely responsible for the concept of The Cookers. Taking an occasional special project and turning it into a working band, giving unsung heroes of jazz the opportunity to showcase their improvisational and compositional skills in rearrangements of their tunes by Weiss.

An evening with the Cookers is a an opportunity (a gift really) to catch important vital musicians that hold a serious place in the historical jazz continuum yet are still at the top of their game. We’ve been losing a lot of jazz greats in recent times – these musicians are still with us and still playing great so if you love fiery, hard swinging jazz I’d highly recommend checking them out. There's two shows at Performance Works on opening night June 22^nd. I know opening night is full of great music and hard choices, but do try to catch one of their shows. You'll be glad you did!