Nigel Price Organ Trio - Hit The Road

Size: 148,5 MB
Time: 63:55
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2014
Styles: Jazz: Hammond Organ
Art: Front

01. Hit The Road (6:13)
02. Up Jumped Spring (7:55)
03. Chelsea Bridge (8:15)
04. Lover Man (8:40)
05. Dreamsville (7:30)
06. Go! (7:16)
07. Detour Ahead (7:18)
08. Bizzy Bee (6:37)
09. Hot Seat (Chas's Chair) (4:08)

Nigel Price, the British jazz guitarist devoted to such late guitar heroes as Wes Montgomery and Grant Green, cruises through some classic themes and compatible originals with the fine pairing of Pete Whittaker on Hammond organ and Matt Home on drums. But if Price and co tick all the boxes of this style, closer listening reveals their audacity and advanced techniques, particularly notable in the fluency with which they mix tempos and time signatures in between and sometimes within tracks. Up Jumped Spring splices two speeds of swing and fast-waltz passages; Chelsea Bridge gets a Latin feel; Lover Man is a fast samba with stop-start breaks but features some nimble swerves and a Django Reinhardt-like tone from the leader; and the delectable ballad Detour Ahead features the trio at their collective best. Saxophonist Vasilis Xenopoulos helps the band muscle through the hustling finale Hot Seat, a classic swing-to-bop gallop. This is a respectful celebration of a now-smooth tradition, but a very musical one. ~John Fordham

Hit The Road

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Nigel Price - Fool's Gold

Size: 128,6 MB
Time: 55:18
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2004
Styles: Jazz: Guitar Jazz, Hammond Organ
Art: Front

01. Booze Blooze (4:35)
02. Fool's Gold (8:17)
03. Blues Riff (4:54)
04. Friday The 14Th Part 1 (7:40)
05. Straight, No Bounce (6:13)
06. Alfredo (5:02)
07. Benson Edges (6:20)
08. Look For The Silver Lining (6:44)
09. S.O.S. (5:30)

Nigel Price - who led his organ trio to pick up the 2010 Parliamentary Jazz Award for “best jazz ensemble” is one of the most highly regarded and in demand guitarists on the UK jazz scene today.

He spent three years with UK funk legends - the James Taylor Quartet, placed third in the 2014 British Jazz Awards for “best guitarist” and is also a regular performer at Ronnie Scott’s, where he has played over 400 times.

His blend of flowing bebop lines, deep blues feeling and mastery of chording has made him instantly accessible and popular with jazz audiences.

Fool's Gold

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Nigel Price Organ Trio - Heads & Tales, Volume 2 Disc 1 And Disc 2

Album: Heads & Tales, Volume 2  Disc 1

Styles: Guitar Jazz
Year: 2016
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 61:45
Size: 143,0 MB
Art: Front

(7:55)  1. Blue Genes
(6:08)  2. Wet & Dry
(6:24)  3. Up and Out
(7:30)  4. Parker 51
(6:20)  5. War
(6:07)  6. R&R
(6:43)  7. Majority
(5:49)  8. Junk
(8:44)  9. Smokescape

Nigel Price's second volume of Heads & Tales is, quite literally, a game of two halves. As with the first volume, released in 2011, it incorporates two CDs each containing different versions of standards. The first disc, where Price is accompanied by Matt Home on drums and Ross Stanley on Hammond organ, plus guest saxophonists Alex Garnett and Vasilis Xenopoulos, utilises the same device as on the first volume. The standards are given new heads and titles but follow the same or similar underlying structures as the originals. The second disc comprises more faithful interpretations of the standards but here Price plays solo guitar, mostly accompanied by double tracked guitar ("Come Rain Or Come Shine" is a single guitar solo exception).

This straight ahead, hard bop influenced set belies Price's history as a member of both the acid jazz James Taylor Quartet and the funky jazz band known collectively as The Filthy Six. But Price, influenced by the likes of Wes Montgomery and George Benson is unquestionably a terrific jazz guitarist as this album attests. The main point of the album and its predecessor is the way in which a standard can be played with a different melody and then separately given a more conventional treatment too, so it really does become a two-for-one album. Price also rechristens titles with typical dry humour so Gigi Gryce's "Minority" becomes "Majority," Harold Arlen's "Come Rain Or Come Shine" becomes "Wet & Dry" and Frank Loesser's "Slow Boat to China" is transmuted into "Junk" (a Chinese boat!).  On the first disc (Heads) the unrestrained ebullience of the opener "Blue Genes" (a version of Duke Pearson's "Jeannine") is immediately apparent and fixes in the memory like glue. But Price's talent also extends to consummate blues playing too as evidenced on the sultry "Smokescape" (a version of Kenny Burrell's "Midnight Blue") and the breezier "Fragment Of Blues." The only anomaly on the album is Jimmy Raney's "Parker 51" which remains in its original arrangement.

On the solo disc (Tales), the numbers are performed with crystalline precision and sensitivity. Take for example, Horace Silver's "Peace," where Price comes close to emulating such great jazz guitarists as Joe Pass and Tal Farlow, or Ray Noble's "Cherokee," on which Raney's "Parker 51" was based.  One interesting aspect of Price's playing is his unadulterated guitar tone (for guitarists, he's playing a D'Angelico NYL-5) which utilises no effects pedals, (in an excellent 2012 interview for the Huffington Post, Price referred to these as "talent boosters"). Indeed the tone and to some extent the style Price obtains on "Up And Out" is not unlike that found on John McLaughlin's 1969 debut album Extrapolation, but Price still retains his own characteristically pure and punchy style. In truth it's fair to say that Nigel Price is probably the most dynamic and gifted guitarist on the British jazz scene today and this is the proof. ~ Roger Farbey https://www.allaboutjazz.com/heads-and-tales-volume-2-nigel-price-whirlwind-recordings-ltd-review-by-roger-farbey.php

Personnel: Nigel Price: guitar; Matt Home: drums; Ross Stanley: Hammond organ; Plus: Alex Garnett: alto & tenor saxophone; Vasilis Xenopoulos: tenor saxophone.

Heads & Tales, Volume 2 Disc 1

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Album: Heads & Tales, Volume 2  Disc 2

Year: 2016

File: MP3@320K/s

Time: 49:16

Size: 114,4 MB

(6:18)  1. Cherokee

(5:05)  2. Have You Met Miss Jones

(5:43)  3. Jeannine

(4:20)  4. Peace

(5:52)  5. Come Rain or Come Shine

(4:53)  6. Minority

(5:00)  7. Fragment of Blues

(5:24)  8. Slow Boat to China

(6:37)  9. Midnight Blue

Heads & Tales, Volume 2 Disc 2

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Nigel Price Organ Trio - Live!

Size: 143,1 MB

Time: 61:50

File: MP3 @ 320K/s

Released: 2009

Styles: Jazz: Guitar Jazz, Hammond Organ

Art: Front

01. Bock To Bock (8:58)

02. Jingles (7:50)

03. My Favourite Things (9:47)

04. Angel Eyes (7:34)

05. Mozambique (7:25)

06. S.O.S. (6:15)

07. When Sunny Gets Blue (7:33)

08. Cottontail (6:24)

A former soldier, guitarist Nigel Price is probably best known in musical circles for his work as a member of the long running JTQ led by organist James Taylor. Price has also played with a host of leading British names in the jazz field in settings ranging from mainstream to acid jazz and funk. He has a particular affinity for the Hammond organ trio and this unpretentious, swinging live recording features Price in his favourite musical context accompanied by organist Pete Whittaker and drummer Matt Home.

This album is the follow up to the trio’s 2005 offering “Fool’s Gold” and was recorded live during a tour of club venues in Spring 2009. The locations are the Milestones Jazz Club in Lowestoft, Dereham Jazz Society and the famous Bull’s Head in Barnes. Informative liner notes are provided by fellow guitarist Jim Mullen, a musician who also lead his own combo in the organ trio format.

Price has a particular fondness for the compositions of the late Wes Montgomery, a guitarist who frequently worked with organ trios and two of Wes’s tunes are featured here (“Jingles” and “S.O.S.”).However the programme kicks off with a tune by Wes’s brother Buddy Montgomery, “Bock To Bock”. A “minor key swinger” as Mullen describes it, this is a fine opener with Price’s lazily swinging guitar paced by Home’s metronomic drums. Whittaker colours in the spaces and also takes a fine solo himself, racing his Hammond from a whisper to a roar.

Brother Wes’s boppish classic “Jingles” fairly surges along with Price, as elsewhere playing some dazzling runs, Whittaker matches him with some fiery keyboard work and Home enjoys a series of exhilarating drum breaks.

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “My Favourite Things” has become a regular item in the jazz canon since John Coltrane liberated it from “The Sound Of Music.” The trio’s version begins languidly with Price leisurely stating the theme above Home’s gently propulsive brush work. The piece really takes off with Whittaker’s organ solo as Home switches to sticks before Price returns with a coruscating solo above Home’s crisp drumming and Whittaker’s organ growl. At one point there’s even the clanking of bottles to remind us that this is all being recorded live in a pub, The Bull’s Head at Barnes no less.

“Angel Eyes” by Earl Brent and Matt Dennis represents the gentler side of Price’s playing with quietly elegant chord based soloing above sympathetic brush work and restrained Hammond accompaniment. Whittaker’s rhapsodic Hammond breaks away mid tune before the trio end again in ballad mode.
Price’s “Mozambique” is the only original tune on the record. It’s full of clipped, funky rhythms and phrases, jazzy guitar runs and grooving Hammond. Both front line instrumentalists contribute fiery solos as Home drums up a storm behind them.

The energy levels are maintained on a breakneck version of Wes Montgomery’s “S.O.S.” with Home featuring alongside Price and Whittaker in a series of explosive drum breaks that are even more dazzling than before.

“When Sunny Gets Blue” by Jack Segal and Marvin Fisher is a lush ballad and a quicksilver version of Duke Ellington’s “cottontail” takes the album storming out. Price’s choppy chording and slippery bebop inspired lines impress on the Ellington piece with Whittaker replying in kind with some characteristically fiery Hammond as Home really rattles the tubs.

There’s nothing particularly new or surprising on on this album but then that isn’t the aim of Price and his colleagues. Quite simply they’re playing the music they love to play and, as Mullen observes, keeping the spirit of Wes Montgomery alive. Mullen also refers to the great organ combos of Jack McDuff and Jimmys Smith and McGriff.

All fans of this format will find much to enjoy here. This is unpretentious swinging fun played with skill and verve.

Live!  

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