Throughout his three-decade recording career, veteran New York guitarist, singer, and songwriter Chris Bergson has continuously demonstrated an almost uncanny ability to pivot from blues to jazz to soul with equal measures of expertise. He does so once again on East River Blues, a smokin’ seven-track album that includes a convincingly moody rendition of Muddy Waters’s “Mean Disposition,” an achingly soulful reworking of Rodgers and Hart’s “Little Girl Blue,” and Bergson making like the second coming of legendary jazz guitarist Grant Green on the self-penned instrumental title track.
Assisting Bergson in his nimble genre-jumping are Kingston jazz bassist Larry Grenadier (who has worked alongside the likes of Stan Getz, Brad Mehldau, and John Scofield and first played with Bergson over 30 years ago in Joe Henderson’s quartet) and New Orleans master drummer Herlin Riley (a veteran of Ahmad Jamal’s, Wynton Marsalis’s, and Dr. Lonnie Smith’s bands), who deftly handle every twist and turn Bergson throws at them. Saxophonist Jay Collins, a mate of Bergson’s from their time in Levon Helm’s band, stops by to blow tenor on three of the tracks—including a sigh-inducing reading of Ray Charles’s “What Would I Do” that would have surely brought a smile to Levon’s face. Recorded, mixed, and mastered by Scott Petito at NRS Recording in Catskill, East River Blues positively drips with a sweaty, nocturnal vibe, transporting the listener to the sort of atmospheric after-hours dive where just about anything can happen. And with Bergson leading the proceedings, practically everything does.
