Rodney Whitaker’s When We Find Ourselves Alone Discussed

RODNEY WHITAKER Recounts His Journey to Joy Through Life, Love and Tragedy
on When We Find Ourselves Alone – Available August 19 on Mack Avenue Records

“…an inexhaustibly swinging bassist with a mammoth-sized
sound and an infectious personality as radiant as his
walking lines and solos.” – Detroit Free Press

The Motor City’s own bass-loving son Rodney Whitaker eloquently and exuberantly evinces the dynamic spirit that has driven him across eight records for the Detroit-based jazz label, a lengthy tenure with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and a career that knows no bound. When We Find Ourselves Alone is the signpost of an artist still traveling the highway of discovery.

With When We Find Ourselves Alone, he gathered generational contemporaries and modern masters including saxophonist Antonio Hart, pianist Bruce Barth and drummer Gregory Hutchinson, each a friend and musical partner for close to a quarter century. Reinforcing the family feel of the proceedings, Whitaker’s daughter, Rockelle Fortin, brings her expansive voice and keen interpretative skills to five selections. “Quartet with saxophone is really my voice,” says Whitaker. “I grew up playing in that context and with vocalists. When you’re from Detroit, you don’t compartmentalize or segregate music. You play funk, you play bebop, and you play gospel.”

The ambiance on When We Find Ourselves Alone is similar to what Whitaker generated on such turn-of-the-century gems as Winter Moon, Ballads and Blues: The Brooklyn Session and Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, all recorded for small independent labels, on which the leader drew repertoire from several stylistic tributaries. Now, as then, Whitaker and company address the leader’s five originals and six arrangements with an old-school feel and a 21st century attitude. They follow the time-tested jazz aesthetic, embracing the tradition of navigating the long-standing forms with individualistic tonal personalities, ebullient soulfulness and an unending will to swing.

“I think of what Carl [Allen] and I did on our records as 21st century soul jazz,” Whitaker says. “This record is closer to modern hard bop. It’s about swinging and having a good time. Even though I hadn’t gigged with any of them for years, there’s a certain freedom to playing with people you trust that you can’t get otherwise. I worked with Bruce from 1989 to 1991 with Terence Blanchard, and he’s like a big brother to me. I was on the road for four years with Greg and three with Antonio in Roy Hargrove’s group. They’re like my little brothers, and we’re all grown men now. All these guys knew my daughter as a child, and they hadn’t seen her since she was probably ten years old.”

Whitaker relates the back story of the jaunty opener, “The World Falls Away,” a medium swinger propelled by Hutchinson’s crisp beats and highlighted by Hart’s impassioned, melodic declamation. “It was Valentine’s Day, and I’d had a bad day,” he says. “My wife gave me a card that talked about the rigors and challenges of life, and at the end said, ‘But at night, when we’re together and lying in each other’s arms, the world falls away.'”

A thread of joyous nostalgia infuses “When You Played With Roy,” an AABA theme with a bossa feel that contains a catchy 10-bar bridge. Whitaker’s brief opening solo displays his abundant technique and creativity, qualities that also animate Hutchinson’s exchanges with the soloists. “Everywhere I play, people approach me and say, ‘I loved it when you played with Roy Hargrove,'” Whitaker says. “I started thinking about turning that title into a theme that would capture the joy of performing with Roy and the joy people got from hearing the group live.”

Whitaker bows a plush introduction to “Autumn Leaves,” then switches to pizzicato for a dramatic rubato duo with his daughter, whose stately rendering of the lyric foreshadows a cogent scat solo once the tempo morphs to swing.

Photo Credit: Cybelle Codish
Hart’s pure soprano saxophone tone illuminates the poignant long notes that open “Jamerson’s Lullaby,” which references not only the immortal Motown session bassist, but also the sadness that Whitaker’s youngest son, Jamerson, age five, experiences when it is time to go to bed. Whitaker adds, “He looks at you and smiles, and it’s so infectious it makes you happy,” – in this case, a mood-switch denoted with a change to major key in the B-section.

Fortin channels her inner Carmen McRae on “You Go To My Head,” enlivened by Hutchinson’s neo-hip-hop pocket and ascendant solos by Hart, Barth and Whitaker. Then Whitaker creates a polyrhythmic bass line to maneuver “Invitation”-one of several homages to tenor saxophone immortal Joe Henderson that he has recorded-away from well-traveled routes.

There follows “Freedom Day,” an Oscar Brown song depicting the end of slavery at the end of the Civil War that Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln memorably recorded in 1960 on We Insist! After Fortin’s intense delivery of the lyric, and fierce statements by Hart and Barth, Hutchinson displays his rarefied position on the drum tree with a solo that dialogues with Roach’s drum oratory from half-a-century ago.

“I follow W.E.B. DuBois in thinking about music as a way to talk about politics,” says Whitaker. “We live in a time where we have an African-American President, yet people are angry at him solely because he’s African-American. We’re not free yet, though we think we are. But slavery didn’t just change the black man. It changed us all. We’re not ready to let go of oppression or the anger in our hearts.” Whitaker’s social activist concerns underpin “A Mother’s Cry,” a memorable refrain that he composed a few years ago for the documentary film Malaria & Malawi: Fighting to Save the Children, earning a Michigan Emmy nomination for the theme. Propelled by Whitaker’s ferocious 12/8 vamp and Hutchinson’s Afrodiasporic beats, Hart uncorks a magnificent soprano solo that evokes both the pain of malaria’s impoverished victims and possibility of a remedy.

In arranging “Mr. Magic,” Whitaker hewed to Roberta Flack’s early ’70s hit that Grover Washington immortally interpreted as a soprano saxophone instrumental in 1975. Fortin elicits oceanic emotions from the lyric; Hart’s ecstatic solo signifies on his very first jazz saxophone hero. “It’s a song about joy, someone who found someone, treated them with love and took care of them physically,” Whitaker says.

Whitaker composed the title track two years ago for a commissioned work titled Jazz Up South on the topic of migration stories. “It’s about forbidden love between two people who are in love when people do not want them to be together,” Whitaker says. Turbulent solos by Barth and Hart evoke the inflamed emotions of love denied. “For me, the story is a metaphor for life, when people don’t pursue their dreams. My compass has always been to do first what brings joy to my life.”

Along those lines, Whitaker concludes this well-wrought portrait of the artist in mid-career with “Lost In You Again,” a modern gospel classic by Fred Hammond, illuminated by Barth’s and Hart’s jubilant solos. “The spiritual realm is part of my upbringing, and if I’m telling a story or putting together a set, I want to attend to the whole person,” Whitaker says. “I want to talk about every aspect of life and love and tragedy. Sometimes you’ve got to talk about the unpleasant to get to joy, but ultimately it should all end with joy.”