James Carter Organ Trio – At the Crossroads

At the Crossroads

James Carter Organ TrioAt the Crossroads EmArcy B0016081-02 (2011)


At the Crossroads has some of the benefits and all the drawbacks of any typical James Carter album. He plays to the audience, recontextualizing bits of the past with a lot of charisma.  Maybe he doesn’t reach to do this as much as he has elsewhere, but he still does it.  But he also plays in front of a band that seems a little too conservative for his solos.  When I’m feeling unkind, I would even say he pulls a Sidney Bechet and purposefully has the band sandbag by playing dull tropes to make him sound more impressive by comparison.  Anyway, there is a bit too much lazy blues and lounge-y stuff here, and the occasional vocals seem to lack any sort of edge, but occasionally it hits, like on “The Hard Blues” and “Aged Pain.”  If all this sounds like a pretty tepid endorsement, then it suits this lukewarm effort.