{"id":3726,"date":"2014-01-01T22:21:10","date_gmt":"2014-01-01T22:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jazzusa.com\/urban-knights-urban-knights-iv\/"},"modified":"2011-01-01T22:21:10","modified_gmt":"2011-01-01T22:21:10","slug":"urban-knights-urban-knights-iv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/?p=3726","title":{"rendered":"Urban Knights – Urban Knights IV"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Urban Urban Knights IV<\/font>
Urban Knights<\/font>
(Narada Jazz – 2001)
by Ray Redmond <\/font><\/p>\n

This latest effort from Ramsey Lewis’<\/i> crew is good for the most part, and better than their last outing overall The Message<\/i> starts you off on the right foot. Melodious horns riding a smooth wave of percussions, trumpet crooning the melody like a somber storyteller. Moving pictures<\/i> is very piano-centric, very Ramsey Lewis<\/i> influenced with rambling, innovative piano lines. Slick<\/i> finally gets you into that Urban A\/C groove you expected in the first place. Percussion and bass abound here, with a bluesy\/Benson-ish guitar.<\/p>\n

Latin Flavor<\/i> has a touch of the flamenco in it’s A\/C stew. There’s also a strong cover of the Terrence Trent D’Arby hit Sign My Name<\/i> that hits the mark. The sax work is very controlled and authoritative, communicating the tone of the tune convincingly.<\/p>\n

The vocals on Thinkin’ About Your Love<\/i> are sweet, and are complimented by the ‘correct’ piano riffs and melodies. It reminds me of the feel I got from the old Bohannon track Thoughts and Wishes<\/i>… very carefree and easy, if sparse on lyrics. The One<\/i> is straight R&B, good but not jazz and a little out of place on this release.<\/p>\n

Then High Heeled Sneakers<\/i> comes along and gets you back into the groove. Bouncing keyboards and popping basslines romping out at you from the speakers, showcasing their real talents. Clubland<\/i> goes from pensive to Tampa nightlife in a few short phrases. This is a very copa-cabana, B-3 era track and again shows the versatility of the Urban Knights Crew. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

<\/body><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Urban Knights IV Urban Knights (Narada Jazz – 2001) by<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3726\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}