“Jass” was the maiden term for jazz music when the form emerged from the streets and nightclubs of New Orleans and St. Louis. The twinkling Trio Loco plays up the pun, as its music crosses easily from jazz to Latin and straight-up lounge—but it’s all “jass” in the end. Fronted by über-crooner and gutbucket bassist Studio Stu, this recording features composer and SUNY New Paltz jazz studies director Mark Dziuba on guitar and the dynamite Dean Sharp on all things percussive. Engineer Paul Antonell of Rhinebeck’s Clubhouse studio delivers a perfect mix, with Stu’s Studivarious washtub bass sounding at times like a four-string standup or Fender Precision, and Sharp’s drums have drive but never overpower. Dziuba is at the top of his game, whether composing (i.e., the instrumental opener “Mobile Infirmary”) or running chords all over the neck on Pat Martino’s “The Visit.” All the selections are more fun than a barrelful of matzoh, with some standard schmaltz (the Peggy Lee hit “Fever”) mingled in with real gem arrangements (Johnny Mercer’s “I’m an Old Cowhand”). Jass delivers the jazz on Thelonious Monk’s “Epistrophy” (whose title means “a word or phrase that repeats itself”) with its ear-bending semi-tone melody. The farewell track, the trippy “oddNormal,” is remixed and looped by Sharp. Plan on spending many late, smoky nights with all this Jass.
www.myspace.com/triolocojass.
This article appears in November 2007.
