Bringing Sunday Morning to Saturday Night
A look at James Brandon Lewis - For Mahalia, With Love (TAO Forms, 2023)
Among his peers, James Brandon Lewis is something of an outlier. Compared against fellow reeds players like Kamasi Washington, Shabaka Hutchinson, and Ingrid Laubock, Lewis’s music seems more rooted in the tradition. Not that he’s a jazz conservative a la Wynton, he’s just someone whose music seems more like it’s part of a larger tradition.
Indeed, on his first couple records he’s recorded with bassists William Parker and Jamaaladeen Tacuma, both of whom have long resumes and have worked with nearly everyone. The records were no slouches, either. Days of FreeMan drew from a wide range of sounds: “Black Ark” had a slick bass part from Tacuma and Lewis’s quick bursts drew inspiration from MCs. Meanwhile, “Lament for JLew” burst into rock grooves, with Rudy Royston’s pounding drums and a forbidding sounding bass line.
Since Days of FreeMan was released in 2015 by Sony/Columbia/OKey, Lewis has mostly worked for smaller European labels like Intakt, which seems more in line with his music. In 2020 he released two records: Live in Willisau, a boisterous duo session with drummer Chad Taylor, and Molecular, a more introspective record featuring a group with Taylor, bassist Brad Jones, and pianist Aruán Ortiz.
His latest record is For Mahalia, With Love which is coming out via the adventurous TAO Forms label. It features his Red Lily Quintet, a group with Taylor, bassist William Parker, Chris Hoffman on cello, and Kirk Knuffke on cornet. For Mahalia, With Love is what it suggests: a suite of songs one associates with gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. Her style of gospel might be a touch unfashionable now, but Jackson (1911-72) was a powerful singer who only performed spiritual music; despite her popularity among secular listeners, Ralph Ellison wrote that “she is as far from the secular existentialism of the blues as Sartre is from St. John of the Cross.”
It’s also a music Lewis says he grew up with. He’s described the music as a three way conversation between him, his grandmother, and Jackson. Be that as it may, I hear a few other names in the mix. But more on that later.
The album’s mostly made up of old spiritual standards: “Go Down Moses,” “Swing Low,” ‘Elijah Rock,” and a few others. But it opens with its one original, “Sparrow,” a medley of a couple themes. Here James opens with long, flowing notes while the band swells up behind him. Before long, they’re moving almost in unison like a choir while Chad Taylor hits gentle rolls and cymbal splashes behind them.
The band’s approach to these old themes isn’t exactly reverential. “Swing Low” opens with Lewis playing unaccompanied on his horn for about 90 seconds. When the band comes in, it’s heavy on the low end (William Parker plays bass and Chris Hoffman is on cello) and Taylor plays busy patterns on his kit. But it’s the two voices, James on sax and Knuffke on cornet, that make the strongest impression. They play against each other, moving like two boxers in the ring. This lineup, where there’s no cordial instruments, and where everyone seemed to be paired off against each other, gives For Mahalia, With Love an interesting texture.
This texture really comes through on “Calvary,” which opens with both Parker and Hoffman playing long, bowed lines. It’s a simmering base for Lewis and Knuffke to work around and the way they play in unison gives its a quiet intensity, not far removed from Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman.” It builds and builds, and after four minutes it explodes in a spasm with Lewis and Knuffke playing rapid bursts.
Throughout the record the music is very rootsy, with arrangements I wouldn’t hesitate to call gutbucket. For Mahalia, With Love reminds me of Mingus at times, particularly his Roots and Blues record, but also the way George Adams approached the music in the 70s. But without a piano, maybe it’s closer to Ornette Coleman’s records, especially in the way the horns move around each other without a piano to keep the music grounded.
But the name that I keep coming back to is Albert Ayler. On records like Stockholm, Berlin 1966 (HatHut, 2011), Ayler and his band (Donald Ayler, Michel Samson, William Folwell, Beaver Harris) have an angular, intense approach to Ayler’s gospel-informed songs like “Our Prayer.” The way Ayler’s horn mingles with the trumpet and violin is echoed here in the way Lewis’s group approaches these old themes; maybe the key difference is Lewis’s band uses a cello instead of a violin.
I hear this influence a lot on “Where You There” and the way the leads play lines that don’t quite mesh, the way Taylor’s drumming is free and propulsive but never overwhelming, the way Parker and Hoffman keep the low end interesting by alternating between plucking and bowing their instruments.
This is music that draws on the gospel tradition while not trying to sound like it. To paraphrase a line of Albert Murray’s, it’s music that takes the energy and feeling of Sunday morning but is played with the approach and attitude of Saturday night. It’s a record that keeps getting better the more I listen; I liked it at first, but after about a dozen hours of sitting with it, I think it’s one of the most exciting jazz records I’ve listened to all year. It’s a big step forward in Lewis’s music, and I think it’s one that any open-eared listener will appreciate.