Actual Proof

Amazon.com
Here's some greasy, authentically swinging groove music by a drummer with both feet planted firmly on the ground. Actual Proof, by virtue of its instrumental focus, and the blessed absence of ostentatious vocals and awful songs, is as good a jazz-funk amalgam as one is likely to encounter in this age of prefab, MIDI-ized, one-size-fits-all airplay prayers. This thanks to a series of witty, well-conceived arrangements that Clark and his band tackle with wit, good taste, and a real sense of the music's historical context and connections to modern jazz--going back all the way to T-Bone Walker and Louis Jordan, and as far forward as Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis (a truly dancing rethink on the seldom-covered Miles in the Sky masterpiece "Stuff").

The boppish, four-to-the-floor ferocity of "Cops and Robbers" underscores Clark's deep feeling for the blues, gut-bucket funk, and prebop swing ... not surprising, given that his résumé included Frogman Henry, Jimmy Reed, Albert King, and Freddy King by the time he graduated from high school (which gives his shuffles on "Stringers" and "The Famous Door" a real bacon-and-biscuits skank). Clark fronts a fine band (particularly enlivened by 8-string guitarist Charlie Hunter's Hammond organ-styled comp), which delineates that point where the rubber meets the road--where swing and funk intersect--as on the gloriously Mickey Spillane film noir of trumpeter Tim Ouirnette's "Attack of the Forty-Foot Woman" and the atmospheric, agonizingly slow groove to "59th Street Station," on which bass clarinetist Benny Maupin and bassist Ted Trimble illustrate the timelessness of the blues. And with his feverishly syncopated bass drum and dancing snare-cymbal combinations, drummer Clark gives these groove-oriented tunes a grit and authenticity seldom found in so-called fusion records. What it is. --Chip Stern

Actual Proof,Mike Clark,Pgi / Platform,Hard Bop,Jazz,Jazz Music,Pop

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