Javon Jackson Expression Smoke Sessions **** RECOMMENDED

If you’re an unabashed Jazz Messengers fan you’re going to have to rush out and get this, not that it’s orthodox or trying to recreate anything and there’s no trumpeter or a trombone even in sight, as it’s the last, and best, of the eight albums reviewed recently here from the exciting new Smoke Sessions label, catching live jazz in optimum conditions at the Harlem club Smoke in July last year.

Javon Jackson, the ex Blakey-ite who had a string of well regarded albums for Blue Note in the 1990s, here with Kenny Garrett men bassist Corcoran Holt and drummer McClenty Hunter plus the tasteful pianist Orrin Evans (playing with Jackson for the first time) coming over all McCoy-like at least at the beginning of ‘Don’t You Worry’ one of his best solos here.

Beginning with Ugetsu classic, a tune recorded at another New York club Birdland back in 1963, Wayne Shorter’s joyous swinger ‘One by One’, there’s lots of different stuff to savour among the 10 tracks: later soul anthems mingling with the vintage hard bop and fine originals the pick of which is the ballad ‘Lelia’. Jackson isn’t afraid to play from the heart, tender on Stevie Wonder’s ‘Don’t You Worry ’bout a Thing’ but even better on Ralph MacDonald and William Salter’s ‘Where is the Love’. A real supper club set nothing fancy but going deep to the heart of the whole jazz mystery in the very core of the song is what’s here. ‘Richard’s R.A.P.’ succeeds in being sociopolitically-conscious in the title name too giving some strong extra content in the fine Jackson original itself a composition that pays tribute to the stalwart educational work of the great Richard Davis, allowing Holt a chance to shine, which he grabs with both hands. SG

The other albums in the series, rated and reviewed are: Midnight Melodies; Liberation Blues;The Uptown Shuffle; Return of the Jazz Communicators; Right on Time; For All We Know; and Groovewise.