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Paul Carr - Straight Ahead Soul
Paul Carr -\\- Straight Ahead Soul – [PCJ Music, 2010]
Striving for the soulful essence, that’s what Paul Carr aims for and ultimately achieves with this delightful new disc. An apt subtitle or guiding principle, might just as well have been back to the roots. For this date, Paul journeyed back to the source, to some of his original inspiration on the tenor saxophone, back to Houston, TX where his quest began. This date is indelibly influenced by that background: by the good times/high times joints in his neighborhood which exuded jazz and blues from their very woodwork, by the deeply moving sounds emanating from nearby churches with parishioners praying, rejoicing, and testifying to their glories and sorrows, by the clickety-clack presence of the trains riding the nearby rails — what author Albert Murray referred to as railroad onomatopoeia–the incessant thrum of those rails. Those inspirations coupled with vivid memories of sitting at the feed of such Houston mentors as saxophonists Arnett Cobb, Don Wilkerson, and Conrad Johnson, are the raw materials that Carr successfully melded to make this record. Continue reading
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