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David Benoit

Standards

Kind of Blue 10009

Like the recent Stanley Clarke album (also called Standards), this recording was initially made for the short-lived Vertical Jazz label, but is now issued, skilfully remastered, by Kind of Blue, an outfit accurately described by Nat Hentoff as 'the best jazz label to come out of nowhere I have ever seen'.

Pianist David Benoit is known chiefly as a smooth-jazz innovator (an oxymoron, possibly), but on this album he exercises his considerable straightahead-jazz chops on some relatively under-exposed material (a rattling version of Neal Hefti's 'Cute', a punchy 'Blue Rondo a la Turk' that builds to a couple of thunderous climaxes, a splashy romp through Oscar Peterson's 'Cakewalk') and some more familiar fare (a luxuriantly slow 'Stardust', a New Orleans-type shuffle through 'Straight No Chaser', a wallowing 'I Loves You Porgy').

With crisp support from bassist Brian Bromberg and drummer Gregg Bissonette, Benoit proves himself a lively interpreter of standards, unfussy, intensely melodic, but putting just enough wrinkles into his material to sustain interest throughout what is a pleasingly accomplished, polished album that shows another side to a pianist whose smooth-jazz work has been memorably described as 'clean, accessible and easy'; this album is all those things, but much more besides.