John Scofield Piety Street Review

Modern jazz guitarist John Scofield has played alongside greats of the genre including Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, and Billy Cobham, bending his strings to a diverse range of styles with flexibility and technical flair. On Piety Street, however, Scofield turns his attention to a parallel 20th Century American popular music form – the blues.

This ain't the blues as played by blind pan-handlers or railroad hoppers, though: rather, these 13 tracks see a suite of gospel standards, traditionals and Scofield originals played in a clean, full-band jazz style featuring the personnel of pianist Jon Cleary, former Meters bassist George Porter Jr, drummer Ricky Fataar, vocalist John Boutté and Shannon Powell on percussion. It's a tight but tasteful set, one reverential to the religious spirit of the originals, if not always reverential to the form: the God-fearing message of Thomas A Dorsey's Never Turn Back gets a funky itch in its step, all scratchy guitar and trilling organ, while old folk standard Motherless Child shifts intuitively from jazzy swing into a reggae step in its closing minutes.

Does it work? Well, mostly. Occasionally, you're left with the feeling that Scofield and band's instrumental proficiency rather overwhelms the soul-stirring simplicity of the originals: His Eye Is On The Sparrow speeds up the gospel standard into something rather more suitable for a cocktail bar than a church. So perhaps Piety Street is at its best when the band tackle faith with a little fire in their belly. Indeed, it's one of Scofield's own - It's A Big Army - that’s the album stand-out: a fun, upbeat cut of jazzed-up 12 bar blues that sees breathless group vocals and handclaps thrown into the pot.