Jazz in Paris
The Maison de la Radio (“Radio House”) here in Paris holds concerts, and on the night of November 8 it was time to promote the release of Remembering Ray Brown. All members of the trio played with Ray at one time or another — sometimes at Ann Arbor’s now defunct Bird of Paradise: Benny Green on piano, Gregory Hutchinson on drums and, standing in for Ray, Christian McBride on bass. They all flew in this morning and will fly out tomorrow morning for Copenhagen, then back to NYC. A grueling pace (which may explain the dark glasses on Green and McBride, who was also walking with a cane).
And yet they’re all on top of their game. They open with “Ja Da” (Jing Jing Jing) and follow that with a lot of the favorites: “Gumbo Hump,” “Bass Face” that Kenny Burrell wrote for Ray, and “FSR” (For Sonny Rollins, written by Ray). Then a change: Benny does a quiet solo intro to “That’s All” and you could hear a pin drop…absolutely beautiful. They finish with “Captain Bill” (or “Cap’n Bill” as Greg says it), then stand to take a bow to a crowd roaring on their feet, demanding an encore. They choose “Nancy with the Laughing Face” because Ray loved Sinatra, Christian explains. (They all talked to the public at one point or another, Benny with just a few words in French and explaining that Ray once said that, if he had a son, he’d want it to be Christian.)
The night has been wonderful, well worth the taxi ride clear across town, and we all leave happy, the music spinning in our heads.