Apr 2, 2024 12:59 PM
Saxophonist, Sonic Explorer Casey Benjamin Dies at 45
Casey Benjamin, the alto saxophonist, vocalist, keyboardist and producer who stamped his distinctive sounds on the…
“We can’t fix any mistakes,” Vince Ector notes about recording live.
(Photo: Chris Drukker)The concert was Ector’s bandleading debut at the Old Lyme, Connecticut, venue. Recorded in January 2020, it also marked the historic transition of eras. And when played after its March 2023 release, LIVE @ The Side Door pays tribute to two fallen titans.
“It’s significant on many levels,” Ector explained, by phone while driving to a gig with Houston Person at the Jazz Forum in Tarrytown, New York. “First off, I’ve gone into The Side Door many times over many years as a sideman. So when you have an opportunity to lead a band as an independent artist in a venue that you’re so familiar with, it really means something.”
The date features Ector’s Organatomy Trio+ with organist Pat Bianchi, guitarist Paul Bollenback and special guest Justin Jones (a.k.a. the “+” in the group name) on alto saxophone. Combining standards, Ector originals and gems such as Benny Carter’s “The Courtship,” it’s a lively set of music performed on the cusp of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortunately, Ken Kitchings, owner of The Side Door Jazz Club, asked to record Ector’s first headlining concert at his establishment.
“When Ken sent me the recording during the pandemic, I said, ‘Well, this really sounds good,” Ector recalled. “We can’t change it. We can’t go in, and we can’t remix it. We can’t fix any mistakes,’ which was actually great since my career started that straight-to-track way,”
LIVE @ The Side Door is dedicated to organist/multi-instrumentalist Joey DeFrancesco, a fellow Philadelphian who died unexpectedly in August 2022. “I was on the road with Joey the summer that he passed,” Ector shared. “We hadn’t played together in probably 15 years. But we go way back. So for us, it was like a reunion.”
The album bares DeFrancesco’s musical fingerprints. In addition to Ector’s time shared with him on the bandstand, it also features Bollenback, a member of the organist’s first great trio with drummer Byron “Wookie” Landham. And DeFrancesco, in turn, had befriended and mentored Bianchi since 1997.
Ector released LIVE @ The Side Door independently based on his own experience as a sideman on Live at Keystone Korner Baltimore, the final release from the late pianist Stanley Cowell, who passed in 2020. Cowell led a quintet at Todd Barkan’s venue and told Ector that he was committed to release one more album for SteepleChase. “When the pandemic hit, Stanley sent us all a check out of the blue,” he revealed. “He was a generous man and my inspiration for putting this album out on my own label.”
As founder, president and executive director of the New Jersey-based Arts for Kids, Inc., Ector is familiar with the administrative and leadership duties required to run an independent label. And as both a working musician and a lecturer of jazz percussion at Princeton University, he’s also intimately familiar with the concept of multi-tasking.
Having collaborated with the likes of DeFrancesco, Charles Earland, Shirley Scott and Dr. Lonnie Smith, Ector’s prior two albums also feature organ. It’s part of his heritage, he reckons.
“We had a heavy organ culture with everyone from Shirley, Jimmy Smith and Trudy Pitts to Jimmy McGriff, Joey and even Don Patterson” he noted. “We hold a lot of history with that instrument. And as I always tell my students, ‘Put your roots into it!’ That’s what makes the music exciting.
“Philly, the music is just embedded in everything that we do on so many levels,” he added.
Still, Ector’s gigography shows his broad abilities. He’s played in The Charles Mingus Orchestra and The Mingus Big Band, Orrin Evans’ quartet and with Bobby Watson & Horizon and more. And time spent from 1985 to 1991 as a United States Army Bandsman helped further expand his musical points of reference, be it polkas, marches or Irish jigs.
Another aspect of having an independent label is to propagate jazz to future generations, he said. Through conversations that flow with the ease and energy of a Sonny Rollins or Wayne Shorter solo, Ector already spreads the gospel on the bandstand and in the classroom.
“Yeah, I teach, I perform, I even try to educate people I run into,” he confirmed. “I can pass the word along on an elementary school and early childhood level with my non-profit Arts for Kids. We’re losing our masters. So all of a sudden, it’s incumbent upon us to present the information that we’ve learned from experience to the students we teach.”
And as for each one teaching one via his new independent label? “Now that business has changed, you have to evolve,” he concluded. “So if you’re willing to invest in yourself, you put your own thing out.” DB
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