Search - Crown Royals, Ken Vandermark :: All Night Burner

Chicago's Crown Royals pull their melodies away from the curb with a near effortlessness, performing instrumental R&B-funk-jazz that rides high on Ken Vandermark's tenor sax. Listening to these wide-open tunes, you could imagine that Pete Nathan's stummy riffs could be a great train station for Vandermark to blow through with the fierceness of his freer jazz stuff in the Vandermark 5. But Vandermark stays hitched to the tunes, pressing the point that there is a difference between the scale-climbing solo logic of postbebop jazz and the more economical, riff-trading approach set in motion by Booker T. & the MG's and the Meters. You might call this urban swamp funk, but dial it up so's you can call it something. --Andrew Bartlett