Steve Turre and the Latin Jazz All-Stars at Blues Alley 5/31/01

by Alan Greenblatt

Steve Turre has one of the great crowd pleasing gimmicks going in the world of jazz. He makes his living playing trombone -- his "In the Spur of the Moment" was easily one of last year's best jazz disks -- but he really gets a crowd revved up by blowing in a series of conch shells, little repetitive note phrases blown through shells of different size and, thus, different pitch. Those of us of the Jewish persuasion have to appreciate this, sounding as it does reminiscent of the New Year's shofar, or ram's horn.

He performed this stunt last weekend at Blues Alley as the head of an assemblage of New York musicians calling themselves the Latin Jazz All-Stars. They'd all done time in bands led by the likes of Tito Puente (trumpeter Ray Vega) and Chico O'Farrill (pianist Arturo O'Farrell).

Turre's was the biggest name on the stage and, as is traditional under such circumstances, he was the least inspired player there. His opening solo was startlingly sluggish. He had no groove going at all until O'Farrell lit a little fire with some high staccato notes that sounded like tooting street whistles.

The seven-piece band did the usual thing, taking turns all around making two-minute solos on each piece, a couple of originals and longtime favorites such as Dizzy Gillespie's "Con Alma" and Sonny Stitt's "The Eternal Triangle." (Ah, Sonny Stitt, one of the first great jazz men I ever heard live. Does anyone still listen to him, I wonder.)

There was plenty of percussion and bass player John Benitez clearly got as caught up in the music as you would ever want to witness. But the band never put down a truly frenetic, constant thunder groove a contemporary Latin group would these days. They were still playing jazz, and thus there was this underlying urge to keep things cool and under control.

I don't get the sense that last year's infatuation with Cuban music and Hispanic pop performers has translated into a lot of business for America's old guard Latin players. Does the Latin jazz performance film "Calle 54" have any buzz at all? If so, I haven't detected it.

The main lesson of the evening, which is one that I have been slow in learning, is that it's probably best to try to catch the late show at Blues Alley. The band, like Turre, was really just getting going on its first set closer and by that time you're being handed your check and offered the chance to pay another $24 cover and $7 minimum or get out.