1 On the Move [3:57]
2 I’m Gonna Take It Real Easy [3:27]
3 The Rhythm Method [3:29]
4 Slow Down, Low Down [5:42]
5 The Happy Nomad [3:30]
6 Minor Episode [2:27]
7 Gypsy Romance [4:10]
8 Bygones [5:08]
9 Charlie’s Swing [2:52]
10 A.M. Sunrise [4:14]
Royce Campdell (guitars)
Bob Bowen (bass)
Phil Riddle (drums)
No date or place of recording given.
Royce Campbell is one of
the legion of accomplished jazz musicians
who have attracted relatively little international
attention whilst being well known to those
with a particular interest in their instrument
or to the jazz audience in a particular region.
At present Campbell lives
and works in the Virginia / Washington D.C.
area. He is guitarist with the prestigious
Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra. As
a young musician he spent two years touring
with Marvin Gaye and from 1975 to 1994 he
toured extensively with Henry Mancini. At
one time or another he has worked with, amongst
others, Gerry Mulligan, Mose Allison, Jack
McDuff, Ray Brown, Sarah Vaughan, Urnie Green,
John Abercrombie and Dave Brubeck. This is
something like his fifteenth CD as a leader
or co-leader.
Here Campbell turns his considerable
talents to a personal view of the gipsy tradition.
Though Campbell is, naturally and unavoidably,
influenced by the work of Django Reinhardt,
it would be wrong to think of him as one of
Reinhardt’s heirs, except in the most general
sense, and he is certainly not to be
numbered amongst the many imitators of the
great Django. Campbell is honest and sensible
when he says that "this is a recording
of original music performed in my own solo
style with a gypsy jazz feel … I am exploring
my own affinity for this music without making
any claim to authenticity. I know that others
can do that much better than I ever could".
The results are interesting
and entertaining, perhaps rather ‘cooler’
than one might have expected. There’s not
a great deal of overt gipsy passion here;
the predominant mood is relaxed and relaxing,
the gipsy element present more as inflection
and mood than as a sustained stylistic feature.
Campbell belongs, in the broadest sense, in
the modern-mainstream tradition, where his
influences appear to include modern masters
such as Wes Montgomery, Herb Ellis and Charlie
Byrd. His playing on Gipsy Soul remains
in that general idiom, for the most part,
but with added gipsy ‘flavour’.
‘Slow Down, Low Down’ is
an attractively melancholy piece, ‘Bygones’
is inventive and moody; there’s some fine
playing on up-tempo pieces such as ‘The Happy
Nomad’ and ‘The Rhythm Method’. Campbell’s
playing is always melodic and in Bowen and
Riddle he has provided himself with an excellent
rhythm section, both precise and flexible
(a pity they are not given any solo space).
There’s nothing revelatory
or especially ground-breaking here. But it
is an attractive CD (though with a decidedly
short playing time) of intimate, intelligent
music-making, some of the subtleties of which
only become apparent with repeated hearings.
Campbell is a guitarist who deserves to be
better known.
Glyn Pursglove
CD Reviews
Moon Cycle Records GS3064 [39:21]
