{"id":4497,"date":"2014-01-01T22:21:10","date_gmt":"2014-01-01T22:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jazzusa.com\/groovopolis-groovopolis-2\/"},"modified":"2011-01-01T22:21:10","modified_gmt":"2011-01-01T22:21:10","slug":"groovopolis-groovopolis-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/?p=4497","title":{"rendered":"Groovopolis – Groovopolis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Groovopolis\"Groovopolis<\/strong><\/font>
Groovopolis<\/strong><\/font>
(Blue Bamboo Music – 2002)
by Ray Redmond<\/p>\n

<\/font> The Groovopleans<\/em> have arrived to abduct you. The New-Orleans based jazz-groove group is comprised of Christopher Cortez (guitar), Dean Fransen (keyboards), Jay Webb (trumpet), Lenny DiMartino (bass), and Jeff Mills (drums). Their take on Stevie Wonder’s Go Home<\/em> is part guitar groove and part big-band at times. Mr. Noom<\/em> is one of eight tracks penned by guitarist Cortez, and it shows a lot of style in the songwriting and<\/em> performance categories for Cortez. DiMartino holds a strong bottom through the whole CD, and Fransen manages to have huge overtones of Lorber in his style while still sounding fresh. Jammin With Jay<\/em> starts off popping the bass line from the Kool and the Gang<\/em> hit Ladies Night<\/em> overlaid with some smooth keys. Then Cortez comes in on Guitar and changes it up, followed by Webb’s trumpet matching Cortez note for note, then going on his own spree. <\/p>\n

Moon Walk<\/em>, one of keyboardist Fransen’s two composiitonal contributions to this CD is slower and more straight-ahead than the Cortez stuff, vaguely reminiscent of some early Lorber or Chick Corea with a little Freddie Hubbard thrown in… very interesting. The group’s cover of the Marvin Gaye classic What’s Goin’ On<\/em> is led very stylishly throughout by trumpeter Jay Webb. Say What<\/em> and New Blood both feature some fancy duet-melody work between Cortez, Fransen and Webb that gives them a big<\/em> sound. All of the tracks are well written and performed, staying safely within the ‘sound’ they are establishing for themselves. I’d describe that ‘sound’ as being straight-ahead jazz with a healthy infusion of groove<\/em>. This is a very listenable release; I expect to hear more from this group in the future. <\/font><\/body><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Groovopolis Groovopolis(Blue Bamboo Music – 2002) by Ray Redmond The<\/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-4497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4497","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=4497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}