Jazz da Place: Fourplay

Succumbing to the syncopated close-voicing coda of track 8, Mr. Sentra comes around me as I slow down some more and crank "Café Amour".

All smiles and a long pull on my cigarette signifying speed satisfaction, I bump the bass button up another notch, pull the roof back like a drag drone and cruise into town. Folks looking at Larry's groovishious guitar notes looming large and my flicking over white

lettered tires doing just below the speed limit now,

I pass the Handy Mart convenience store thinking

Le Don Bishop is whispering to me from the woofer

behind the back seat. (let it ride brother?) Bob is

Jamesing on the Korg again and has the house

sounding kinda haunted while he and Larry tune me into the 25 MPH zone at the country store past the bank. Harvey booms my entrance into the parking lot making my u-turn look rather jazzy. You're allowed to take your pick of tempo at "Café Amour" Either high caffeine, rapid replay

sashay or cool Columbian counter-play, it's payday and I think I'll have it my way!

Company payroll in hand then glove-box like the old cowboys from the Western Union line, I do the slow clutch release and point 'you, you' during "Ju-Ju" to my office cohorts and I round around Brenda's home care building. Heading back north again, 43 NC. Track 9, right on time, on my way to the back to cash my dime with Masong Music's "Ju-Ju" on my mind. Tying my horse up between the painted bars on the ground of the Handy Mart, I let "Ju-Ju" do what it's supposed to as I walk into the store. This is one bluesy cut with Larry lighting up the D'Addario strings while I step off back beats to the car after a soda and

snack break. Selected for the slow roll, this cut is a

good starting off point for a drive through the

'radar alley' between Vanceboro and Greenville.

Civic civilized and up to a legal cruising 'altitude',

I'm "Goin' Back Home".

Co-written by both Larry Carlton and Nathan East, if you want to call track 10 a vocalized, instrumental ballad, you can. A Royaltone Recorded rendition of my thoughts about my now graduated and moved back in daughter, softly sung then followed by first Bob, Larry then Bob again, this is smooth jazz at its best and is one of the few songs off the CD that would be recognized as a Fourplay follow-up of "Four" or "Yes Please". "Goin' back home, don't wanna be alone." "Goin' back home, to stay." Running around sixty, tobacco and corn parting to make way, I feel right at home too. With thoughts of the wife, family and friends on my relaxed brain lobes, Bob's augmented bridge alteration to the attitude of the track adds to the contentment.

Try as I might, "Karma" spreads its good feelings all over my speed-

oh!-meter again. My heat seeking, radar-detecting appliance

allows me to run at a skeptical seventy. Clouds

building with the speed, "Karma" is the fourth of

four fabulous forms written by the whole of Four-

play and gives credence to its namesake. This cut

is good natured, gregarious, warm and friendly. It's

a happy handshake between your ears drums and the feel good sensors in your reasoning and recon center. Following the tag, Bob and Larry do a cover then give chase to a call and response through a phrase or two then Larry goes for the first solo before handing things over to Bob. Opinions personal, I feel Larry adds to a better group karma than Ritenour whose sound is a bit harder with too much staccato and more than enough bravado needed at times. With the boys since Lee's hiatus to do "This Is Love", I'm glad to have him in the fold of Fourplay.

I slowed down a bit, throwing a cautious eye toward the summertime cloudburst above me now and realized that the timbre timeline taken from the top sounds much like the windshield wipers wiping away ahead of me. I lose my self in this mindset, regaining it about the time Nathan cuts the fool with another voiceover then it's coda, there out.

In keeping with the standard Fourplay format, Track 12, "Making up" is the soundtrack for goodbye. The reason for the signoff statement above is that most, if not all of Fourplay's albums have this soft, gentle signature for their last cut. This is a tune tuned for deep thoughts or tears. It's as if the group is saying sorry for it being so long between releases. Left hand low on the wheel, smokes in my right, I lounge to

the luxurious licks lamented by Larry and backed by

Bob's caressing key changes; wind chimes blowing

in the breeze. I recline in my Recaro's bucket

bolsters and scan the sky searching for a rainbow

to complement this pot of gold CD called Heartfelt.

Before long, the CD is over and I cut the power to my Civic's new power plant in the parking lot of my nine to five.

As my crew files in then out of my now occupied office space, checks in hand and thank you for an outlook, they too pass raving reviews on the jazzy sustenance emanating from behind my office plants.

Once again I must say thank you to those who have clicked over to Jazz da Place, especially those who have read THIS far. I'll see you soon, much sooner than before, and keep on keeping on, improvising life with jazz till we meet again.

Dion