Groove Holmes
American Pie (Beast Retro 12012)

Beast Retro unearths another great obscurity, this one featuring the great B-3 master Groove Holmes punching the clock on 36 minutes of tasty latin-flavored nightclub jazz. But it's not a smoky late-night club, but rather a Thursday afternoon dive with a live band rolling it out for three regulars and a hooker.

Groove's organ is accompanied by bass, drums, guitar, electric piano, and percussion (bongos and conga), none of the players really a "name" but capable musicians nonetheless. No, this isn't Kind of Blue, but it's sixty hundred thousand times better than Boney James.

Groove kicks it off with a two-and-a-half minute take on Don McLean's title song (the cover art also apes McLean's – Groove's big black thumb with the painted flag on it says volumes more than McLean's skinny white one could if it were lodged deep in McLean's own eye), basically just repeating the main melody line over and over and soloing.

Sonny Rollins' calypso-flavored "St. Thomas" is track two, and another highlight. The rest: some originals ("Catherine," "Fingers"), some standards ("It's Impossible," "Who Can I Turn To"), tons of burnin' B-3, layers of atmosphere, and highly concentrated cool.

The solos range from pretty basic to pretty mind-blowing (including some wacked-out pitch-bending here and there). "It's Impossible" for me to determine whether this is crap or almost-great; the line is hopelessly blurred. All I know is, "It's Impossible" not to dig Groove no matter if he's laying down the best solo ever recorded or just bringin' home the bacon.

Back in the day, this would have been a minor league excursion at best; nowadays you'd better be grateful to hear it so good. Groove on, dig it?

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Review by Rolo Peters