John Fordham 

Paul Booth: Trilateral – review

The highly skilled and versatile sax craftsman Paul Booth has blues power and funky drive in abundance, writes John Fordham
  
  


Rockers hire jazz horn players for blues power and funky drive, and the highly skilled and versatile sax craftsman Paul Booth, who has toured for years with Steve Winwood, has those qualities in abundance - all the more so in his Hammond organ trio featuring the excellent Ross Stanley that's currently taking this varied repertoire on the road. But Trilateral is also a showcase for all Booth's interests, so the programme also features a more jazz-rooted New York group featuring bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Clarence Penn, and a lighter, Latin-angled band with guitarist Phil Robson and percussionist Adriano Adewale. The session consequently has a compilation-album feel at times, and the power of such soulful jazz journeys as the opening Menage A Trois or the smoky Tres Palabras suggests that a Booth session with the New York trio alone would have made very compelling listening. But the Hammond swinger Three's A Crowd, with its bluesily Mose Allison-like tune and restlessly twisting organ break shows how powerful the UK road-band will be. The leader's mix of Michael Breckerish postbop virtuosity and languidly hot ballad-playing is very attractive.

 

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