[Ed. note: This post was originally published on January 29, 2016]
Notwithstanding the essential role that records and CD’s play in the documenting of an artist’s or ensemble’s work; in the writing of jazz history; in the private pleasures they bring listeners and collectors; and in the programming of radio shows, there’s nothing quite like hearing musicians in person. I could cite numerous examples of singers and players whose work I’ve come to appreciate more from seeing them in performance than on record. In a few cases, artists whom I enjoy hearing in person never really do it for me on record.
Either way, Ralph Lalama knocks me out, and his recorded work has been a staple of Jazz a la Mode over the past 25 years. The tenor saxophonist has made several great records for Criss Cross Jazz with pianists Barry Harris, Kenny Barron, and George Cables; a critically acclaimed pair for Mighty Quinn with guitarist John Hart; and a recent trio release, BopJuice: Live at Smalls, which is fabulous. I’d seen Lalama a few times over the years with the Mel Lewis Orchestra and its successor, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, but it’s only been in the past few years that I’ve seen him in the kind of small group setting that most effectively showcases his great playing and charismatic style on the bandstand.
Thanks to the Northampton Jazz Workshop, which has booked them a few times, Ralph and his wife, the vocalist Nicole Pasternak, have appeared locally at Green Street Café and the Clarion Hotel, and they’ll be back at the Workshop’s new home at the City Sports Grille on June 7. Lalama also appears regularly at Smalls Jazz Club, and in addition to playing for fans who pack the basement nightclub at 183 West 10th Street, the Smalls video stream enables viewers to see Ralph and anyone else appearing at the club via the internet. (Nicole travels to Hartford on the first Monday of every month to sing with the Hartford Jazz Orchestra at Arch Street Tavern. She’s a worthy successor to the late Bobbi Rogers, who sang with the HJO for decades.)
While I make a point of seeing Lalama whenever he’s in Northampton, it’s been three years since I last caught him with BopJuice at Smalls. (In what is standard operating procedure at Smalls, a $25 cover charge brought me, on that memorable night, not only two sets by BopJuice, but two sets by Greg Hutchinson’s quintet featuring Aaron Goldberg, Stacy Dillard, Ron Blake and Joe Sanders, and an early morning show by pianist Anthony Wonsey.) At Smalls, Ralph played such gems as “Lester Left Town” by Wayne Shorter; “Take the Coltrane” by Duke Ellington; Ralph’s original bossa nova, “Nonchalant;” and three standards that were also launching pads for Rollins in his prime: “Wonderful Wonderful;” “Will You Still Be Mine;” and “I’m an Old Cowhand,” the tongue-in-cheek cowboy song introduced by Bing Crosby in “Rhythm on the Range” in 1936. Sonny Rollins reloaded the Johnny Mercer tune as a jazz vehicle on Way Out West; Lalama referred to it only as “the dumbest song ever written,” and he rode it hard. (It’s the capper on his 2009 release, The Audience.)
BopJuice generally includes drummer Clifford Barbaro and bassist Joel Forbes. Tenor/bass/drum configurations inevitably bring to mind the trios led by Rollins in the late fifties, the period when Sonny eschewed piano and made magnificent music with Wilbur Ware and Elvin Jones; Ray Brown and Shelly Manne; Henry Grimes and Pete LaRoca. Lalama is cut from a similar mold as Rollins: robust tone; strong beat; melodic inventiveness on jazz and popular standards, all suspended on a harmonic tightrope. Also like Sonny, who’s tended to work with guitarists since the early sixties, Ralph’s made beautiful music with Peter Bernstein and John Hart over the years.
Lalama was born into a musical family in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, on January 30, 1951. (His pianist brother Dave, with whom he’s recorded a couple of dates as The Lalama Brothers, led an outstanding big band session in 2012 called The Hofstra Project. It’s still on the “new shelf” for Jazz a la Mode.) He attributes his love for tunes that precede the rock’n’roll era to what he imagines hearing even before his birth. He told R.J. DeLuke at All About Jazz that his mother was a professional singer who performed until she was eight months pregnant with him. “I was in her womb hearing these tunes live on the stage. I was hearing that vibration. It happened naturally…the…Songbook…is in my blood.”
While Lalama excels in trio and quartet settings, he’s spent his entire career affiliated with big bands. When he was a student at Youngstown State University in Ohio, Thad Jones heard him and encouraged him to come to New York. Once he arrived, he worked occasionally with Thad and Mel Lewis in a quintet, and occasionally subbed for one of the tenors on their band, either Frank Foster or Gregory Herbert. Ralph went on the road with Woody Herman in 1976, and paid dues and “learned to be cool” working with the hot-tempered Buddy Rich. By 1983, when he joined the Mel Lewis Orchestra, the illustrious saxophone section boasted Ted Nash, Dick Oatts, Joe Lovano, and Gary Smulyan. Lalama’s stayed on through the years, which means that for the past thirty, he’s worked at the Village Vanguard virtually every Monday night.
Here’s Ralph playing Thad’s “Mean What You Say” with the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra. (Scott Wendholt is the trumpet soloist.) He plays the tune with BopJuice too, but here’s a good look at him in the setting that he’ll be working in on Monday nights for what I can only wish for Ralph are many happy and healthy years to come.
Here’s an interview with Ralph discussing his chosen instrument, the art of teaching, and what it takes to maintain a life in the music.
