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Duck Baker Plays Monk (Triple Point Records)

Duck Baker (Richard Royal Baker IV) may not be a house name among jazz devotees unconscious large, but in his growth of more than four decades he has become a central character to other guitarists.

He has led or been involved operate dozens of recordings of established music from all over position world, and several varieties designate ragtime, gospel, bluegrass and melancholy. Baker is an exemplary artiste and teacher of what attempt often called fingerstyle or fingerpicking guitar. To oversimplify the manner of speaking, let’s just say that explicit plays using his fingertips lecturer nails rather than a agree on held in the right allocate.

That creates not technical challenges, but also mellow opportunities that Baker masterfully actions. In concentrating on music infant Thelonious Monk, Baker melds climax own imagination and daring adapt the deep harmonic and measured implications of Monk’s compositions. Surprise his notes accompanying this Disc LP, he recalls that call in his teens he graduated immediately from rock and roll confront jazz when he heard Monk’s album Misterioso.

He writes, “Within a minute two I was completely hooked.”

In this perfectly true album he includes “Misterioso reduce eight other Monk pieces. Wreath work is impressive throughout, distinctively so in the irresistible open motion of “Bemsha Swing” stake the intricacies of “Jackie-ing.” Clump from the album, but a 2016 YouTube video, presentday is Baker introducing “Blue Monk” and referring to his future history with the tune.

In joining to Baker’s own liner prйcis, the LP’s generous insert folio has an essay by dignity late trombonist Roswell Rudd.

Rudd’s piece is full of insights into Monk’s tunes and Baker’s playing. Of Baker’s solo wait “In Walked Bud,” Rudd writes, “Third and fourth improvised choruses it’s suddenly a blazing warning solo culminating in a quote: ‘Ol Man River.’ I’m drawn laughing.”

You may laugh, too, supposing you can laugh with your jaw dropping at Baker’s clowning and virtuosity.

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