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Jazz legend Chico Hamilton has come a long way. He turns 85 this September and his life has had an indelible impact on the music, but he hasn’t forgotten where he started. For the better part of the last year, he has been steadily releasing an album of new material every two or three months, each focusing on his musical roots from a slightly different angle. The latest, Heritage, follows this year’s Juniflip, Believe, and 6th Avenue Romp. The new album, like its predecessors, wears on its sleeve a sweet nostalgia for the West Coast jazz scene. Each album evokes in some way the spirit of the California Hamilton knew in the late 1950s, when cool jazz was starting to stretch out and get comfortable—right before rock took America by storm.
Heritage pays homage to that time, and to those friends. It includes Hamilton originals “Mulligan Stew,” a hip, blue one for arranger, baritone saxophonist and cool pioneer Gerry Mulligan; and “One for Hale,” an extended chamber piece with a Miles-ish groove section written for Hamilton’s long time friend, African-American third-stream composer Hale Smith. As an album, Heritage doesn’t always maintain the energy and variety needed to sustain a listener’s attention, but there are frequent moments of brilliance, which the album owes mainly to a couple of high quality guests. Like this year’s earlier releases, the new album features the outstanding playing of Hamilton’s former bandmate, the vastly underrated L.A. trombonist George Bohanon. Bohanon’s horn fills all the right places on several tracks on the album, especially the Gerald Wilson composition “Viva Tirado,” which grooves along noncommittally until Bohanon’s sound emerges out of the arrangement into full, wailing presence.
The album also features vocalist Marya Lawrence on a few tracks, doing a very convincing job at being lonely with “I’ve Got a Right to Sing the Blues,” backed by easy, pretty trombone commentary that builds into squeals and slurs as the song goes on. Some of the best soloing comes quickly at the end of the album, when tenor saxophonist Evan Schwam digs into Wilson’s burning “Yarddog Mazurka.”
If Heritage suffers from lapses in intensity, it is because it is a train of thought that meanders like an old man telling stories. As a memoir, the album is a poignant collection of nostalgic, personal gems, and, for Chico Hamilton, proof that your roots stay with you your whole life as you grow.
NOTE: Since this review was written, Hamilton has posted beats and tracks from Heritage on his MySpace.com site. He invites fans to download them and make their own remixes of his music and submit them, with his favorite remixes to be posted on his MySpace site as well. Evidently Hamilton is also proof that you never stop growing.
