STEVE RAWLINS

WORD ON THE STREET

Independent Label

Steve Rawlins, piano/composer/arranger; Grant Geissman, guitar; Ken Wild, upright bass; Hussain Jiffry, electric bass; John Ferraro, drums; Sal Lozano, alto & tenor saxophone/flute; Marisa Bradfield, Isela Sotelo, Victoria Rawlins, vocals.

The very first song on Steve Rawlins’s new album is called “Moraga Drive.” It moves ahead like a hot balloon, offering a floating, melodic melody that glides above the groove. The sexy saxophone of Sal Lozano improvises on the theme. Rawlins enters with his own piano exploration of the chord changes. Then Grant Geissman steps into the spotlight on guitar. This is straight-ahead jazz with Ken Wild’s upright bass walking powerfully beneath Rawlins’ original song and locking-in the arrangement with John Ferraro’s drums.

For half a century, Steve Rawlins has been building an extraordinary career as a pianist, composer, arranger, trumpeter and musical director. He always had a love of arranging.  At just nineteen years old, young fearless Rawlins reached out to the music director of the Merv Griffin Show, Mort Lindsey, and asked him to check our one of his arrangements.  This led to Rawlins being hired as a freelance arranger for the show.  He became Staff arranger and Music Librarian.

Once he met the great trumpeter, Jack Sheldon, Sheldon introduced him to Benny Goodman.  He commissioned Rawlins to write arrangements for his 40^th Anniversary Concert at Carnegie Hall.  Steve Rawlins’s credentials and reputation soared.  In 1979, John Davidson hired the young arranger to write for his Las Vegas show. This collaboration continued during the televised “John Davidson Show” for the following two-years.

On a tune he wrote called “Friday Night” he added his love of Latin music.

“I thought it would be fun to begin with flute and piano in octaves playing the melody together,” Rawlins explained his arrangement on “Friday Night.”

He has composed or co-composed every song on this album with the exception of the Losser and McHugh song, “Let’s Get Lost” that he presents as a solo piano piece. His song “It’s Cool” is just that, a cool blues with John Ferraro’s talents on the trap drums featured and the unison voices of background singers repetitively singing the title, while the tenor saxophone spreads fire across the arrangement.

The pretty ballad “The Time is Right” slows the groove on a tune that sounds a lot like the chord changes to the hit R&B song, “Love Won’t Let Me Wait,” a 1975 hit record by Major Harris. A tune he calls “The Knuckleball” was a single release from the album. Sal Lozano’s silky smooth saxophone sings the melody before Geissman’s soulful guitar puts the funk in the arrangement. Then Rawlins dances his fingers across the keys, offering his own improvised solo.

There’s something for everyone on this record. From the shuffle groove of “Word on the Street.” (a perfect song for swing dancer’s), to the smokey slow swing rhythm propelling “Tomorrow is Yesterday.”  His delightful piano introduction to “Come with Me to Brazil” is quite compelling.  When the tune breaks into a Latin arrangement, it makes me want to cha-cha-cha across my listening room.

Reviewed by Dee Dee McNeil

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