RICHARD BARATTA “Looking Back”

ARTIST

Richard Baratta

ALBUM TITLE

“Looking Back”

LABEL

Savant

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Some coincidences make you stop and think: Richard Baratta’s new album is titled Looking Back – the same as Scott Hamilton’s latest release. Not surprising, perhaps, since both the Providence-born saxophonist and the Poughkeepsie-born drummer are now past seventy. At such an age, it is natural to reflect on the past. Yet while Hamilton reminisces about his career encounters and pays tribute to swing masters he has known, Baratta – who returned to jazz after a long career as a film producer – revisits his youth and the music that shaped him as a teenager.

This means rock and soul hits from the mid-to-late 1960s, an era of boundless creativity. After two albums dedicated to Hollywood soundtracks – Music in Film: The Reel Deal (2020) and Music in Film: The Sequel (2022) – Baratta reunites the same group to reinterpret classics by the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, James Brown, and Otis Redding. Once again, Bill O’Connell provides the arrangements, bringing polish and imagination. His orchestrations highlight Baratta’s elastic drumming, which veers at times toward funk and electric jazz (with echoes of Miles Davis’s In a Silent Way) and, at others, toward robust post–hard bop (a fiery take on Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze) and Latin jazz.

Some of the less predictable reinterpretations include Caribbean-infused versions of the Beatles’ Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and Hey Jude. The cover of California Dreamin’ inevitably recalls Wes Montgomery’s take on his 1966 album of the same name. All the musicians shine, but special mention goes to Vincent Herring’s incisive alto saxophone and Paul Bollenback’s imaginative guitar. The grand finale, powered by New Orleans rhythms, closes with a brilliant reading of the Rolling Stones’ You Can’t Always Get What You Want.

—Ivo Franchi

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