Hamiet Bluiett, D.D. Jackson, Kahil El'Zabar

Three players, no bassist, no overdubs. The Calling was recorded live at Studio Victor in Montreal on 27 and 28 October 2000, and it sounds like it: a trio working out its material in real time, with the blues and the Black church never far away.

Hamiet Bluiett had by then spent twenty-five years as the baritone voice of the World Saxophone Quartet. This was his eighth record for Justin Time, and a follow-up of sorts to Join Us (1999), where he and the Canadian pianist D.D. Jackson played with the Senegalese drummer Mor Thiam. For The Calling the third chair went to Kahil El'Zabar, the Chicago percussionist and founder of the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, who brings kalimba, bells and his own singing voice along with the drum kit.

Nine of the ten pieces come from inside the trio. Open My Eyes starts on a baritone riff over a dance rhythm, then turns into an El'Zabar vocal with Jackson holding a groove on organ. Ask and You Shall Find is the quiet one: Bluiett on wooden flute, kalimba underneath, the keyboard imitating cries. Black Danube (aka The Calling) ends in hoots and hollers. Jackson covers the missing bass with a bass synth when the music needs a floor, and Bluiett also picks up the contra-alto clarinet, an instrument almost nobody else plays in jazz.

Reviewers at the time heard it the same way: PopMatters called it a cheerfully hybrid session firmly grounded in the blues, and All About Jazz pointed to the call-and-response and the energy of church music. Bluiett died in 2018. This is one of the loosest, most enjoyable records of his last decade of regular recording.

Japanese CD edition from Solid's Justin Time series.