Ike Quebec
Blue & Sentimental

Thus declares Joey, attacking «Pinhead»: «I don't wanna be a pinhead no more ...».

From here, I draw inspiration to create an alias and write about everything that is not punk, nor garage, nor rough rock'n'roll.

What do you want, maybe it's that I now struggle to form the barré chords to keep up with Johnny in «Blitzkrieg Bop»; maybe it's that for some time now I've been listening to music as night falls, and it's not the ideal time to listen to fanatics sending half the world to hell and the other half to the dogs, you'll agree; maybe it's simply that I've aged; but the fact is that I've become obsessed with jazz. Aaaaarghhhhh, I said it!

Now, can you see me as Pinhead discussing «Time Out» or «Mingus Ah Um»? So, here's Pinhead No More, serving as the proverbial cheese on macaroni.

Only that even P.N.M., just like Pinhead, suffers from some unknown dysfunction, in the sense that the newly born passion for jazz did not spring from «Kind Of Blue» and much less from «A Love Supreme»; rather from a record that, more than minor, I would dare to define minimal, «Blue & Sentimental» by Ike Quebec.

Oh, of course, don't expect loads of high musical culture - it's not my thing - and the only thing I've learned so far is that the mentioned «Kind Of Blue» is the ultimate in modal jazz; and yet, in what this distinguishes itself from cool, from bebop or hard-bop or from free delirium, I repeat that it's not my thing, and these days I don't even feel like committing to learning it.

The essential thing is that this music makes my foot tap and my head sway, and as Count Basie said, it deserves to be listened to, if only for this reason; just like pogoing to the roughly hyperkinetic rhythm of the Ramones, exactly the same thing.

You can only expect this from Pinhead No More: that he deals with Davis and Coltrane with the same mischievous lightness of a Pinhead grappling with Clash and Stiff Little Fingers.

Having clarified the situation, I proceed.

So, «Blue & Sentimental» by Ike Quebec... Let's start with the latter.

Ike starts playing the piano and then moves on to the tenor sax, playing in various formations in the '40s, including those led by Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, and Cab Calloway; he disappears from the scene in the following decade, overshadowed by the new bop sensation, but also due to problems related to drug addiction, striving only to survive from hand to mouth - «from Cab jiver to cab driver» labeled him who happened to cross paths with him at the wheel of a taxi (doesn't it terribly remind you of the late Alex Chilton?); only to then rebuild a career, joining Blue Note, where he also serves as musical director (partially, the launch of Dexter Gordon is credited to him). It lasts for a short time, due to the usual, damned cancer that takes him away in 1963, at the age of 44.

Of "his" music, little is known, also due to its difficult availability, mainly the almost-hit «Blue Harlem» and indeed the album «Blue & Sentimental» from 1961, along with a series of collaborations with the guitarist Grant Green and the organist Jimmy Smith.

I was saying, of «Blue & Sentimental», a minor record; but beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Above all, ideal for approaching jazz music without trauma for us filthy rockers, as it is pervaded by blues and soul moods; and if you have had the chance to appreciate the Big Three of Willie Dixon but also certain relaxed atmospheres à la B.B. King, start with «Minor Impulse» or the programmatic «Blues For Charlie» to the contagious discovery of jazz, accompanied by the talented guitarist Grant Green, another talented artist from Blue Note.

Here, for real, we are at the dawn of a sound that will soon be blessed by the resounding commercial success of «The Sidewinder» by Lee Morgan and «Cantaloupe Island» by Herbie Hancock.

Definitely noteworthy are also the nocturnal ballads, infused with swing, of the title track, «Don't Take Your Love From Me», and «Count Every Star», where Quebec pays all his debts to the heroic, seminal Hawkins, Webster, and Basie (the latter, incidentally, the author of «Blue & Sentimental»); in the same way as that «Like», which pays homage to bebop modernism, and in which Quebec adopts a language not very suited to him, with remarkable results.

And to give Caesar what is Caesar's, it is impossible not to mention the contribution to the success of the record by the rhythm section of Paul Chambers and Joe Jones, simply the best bass and drums in the history of jazz, for a thousand different reasons or maybe for the simple, sole fact of having long collaborated with Miles Davis (even if that unlucky Jones parted from him the year before the release of «Kind Of Blue»).

The same thing that could be said of Dee Dee and Tommy for being part of the Ramones or Paul Simonon and Topper Headon for their presence in «London Calling»; exactly the same thing.

Clear?