Bobby Broom, \”Ask Me Now,\” Bobby Broom Plays for Monk
Booby Broom was born and raised in New York City but moved to Chicago about 30 years ago. While versed in trad jazz (bebop and post-bop), Broom draws from a variety of American music forms such as funk, soul, R&B and blues. Here\’s a song from his highy regarded 2009 album of Thelonious Monk songs, Bobby Broom Plays for Monk. The record established Broom as a thoughtful and innovative interpreter of some pretty challenging music.
This is the type of record I love and what I have advocated for jazz players forever. A well-chosen playlist of classic rock, soul and pop music; rendered in a breezy and confident style. Broom is the tastiest of the tasteful soul-jazz six stringers, and herein with his “Organi-sation” an organ-based trio, he chooses familiar tunes, tweaks time signatures, slows down and gives ample room for his fretwork and Ben Paterson on Hammond B-3 to scoot and show-off without the pyrotechnic indulgence.
“Ode to Billie Joe” is a soul-jazz strut, instantly hummable and splashed with brass flourishes and enhanced with a sterling vibes solo by Justin Thomas. Steely Dan’s radio Staple “Do It Again” receives a loping swing, with Broom picking the melody and solos with restraint but precision.
The highlight is the odd choice of Procol Harum’s “Whiter Shade of Pale” – sublime in Paterson’s crawling organ underpinning and then Broom plucking out half-woozy staggering notes to mimic the original song’s vocals – euphonic and splendid – a twilight harkening favorite at our house all of 2018….and today.
Wonderfully straight-ahead jazz, covering songs that are refreshed by the breezy tempos and savvy approachable arrangements.
Two threads run through the nearly four-decade career of Chicago-based guitarist Bobby Broom. One is his love for the Hammond B3. (As a teen, he turned to jazz after hearing the album Black Talk by organ legend Charles Earland — in whose groups Broom would later perform — and he spent most of this century…
February 25, 2019. Most young jazz musicians move to New York City to further their jazz careers. Bobby Broom moved away, to Chicago, and has become the patriarch of jazz guitar in the Second City over the last 30-plus years. Soul Fingers is his second album devoted primarily to reimagining the tunes that shaped the pop, funk, and soul of his youth.
Many jazz artists also eschew the concept of applying jazz treatment to pop music, but Broom has made a career bucking that orthodoxy. Broom teams with Kobie Watkins (drums), and Philly native Ben Paterson (Hammond B-3 organ) to produce an eminently listenable new soul-jazz record of which stylistic progenitors like Wes Montgomery and Richard Groove Holmes would surely approve.
Coming together for the first time in 2014 as openers for Steely Dan, this trio, now rebranded as Bobby Broom and The Organi-Sation, hits its stride when the formal structure of each pop tune gives way to Broom’s intuitive and even-handed improvisation. Broom never strays too far outside the chord changes, and he doesn’t need to; the guys seem much more comfortable cultivating mood and groove than earning merit badges from the technical avant-garde.
Paterson’s gospel-tinged organ permeates the cover of Procul Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale;” a slightly slowed-down tempo amplifies the bittersweet, almost elegiac, quality of the original. “I Can’t Help It” is a cover of the Stevie Wonder-written tune from Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall, punctuated by an outro capturing what might qualify as Broom’s best solo work on the album… if it weren’t for two separate rip-roaring solos on “The Guitar Man.” It’s here where Paterson and Watkins lay all the way back and let Broom wade out to his improvisational edge.
The most interesting tune on the album, though, is the trio’s take on Bobbi Gentry’s 1967 number-one hit, “Ode to Billie Joe.” Written in an unusual time signature (7/4), it’s this tune that, like dark matter, imperceptibly binds the whole together. Justefan Thomas’ solo on vibes halfway through feels like an unexpected treat on what is, from start to finish, the album’s funkiest groove.
Soul Fingers, the recently released album by Bobby Broom & the Organi–Sation, has remained in the top 10 on jazz radio in the United States since its release last October. That’s three straight months!
Representing the debut recording of this group, which began as the opening touring act of the legendary chart topping group, Steely Dan, the album was produced by drummer/producer extraordinaire, Steve Jordan.
“I’d really like to thank all of the DJ’s, jazz radio programmers and listeners for supporting my latest effort. It’s very meaningful to have my music be received in such a positive way”, says Broom.
