Mel Martin's CD with Benny Carter is finally out!

New CD from the Mel Martin/
Benny Carter Quintet,
"Just Friends,"
Celebrates Carter's Centennial

Recorded at Yoshi's in Oakland in 1994,
CD is out on Jazzed Media Label

Bay Area saxophonist Mel Martin honors his longtime musical partnership with the late alto saxophonist and composer Benny Carter -- and Carter's birth centennial in August 2007 -- with the release of Just Friends, a new CD by the band he co-led with Carter in the 1990s. Martin also plans a series of summer and fall appearances on both coasts highlighting material from the new album and from the Benny Carter songbook.

Martin calls Just Friends "one of the best-sounding live recordings I've ever heard." Recorded at Yoshi's in Oakland in April 1994, the CD features exceptional support by Roger Kellaway on piano and drummer Harold Jones -- frequent Carter accompanists -- as well as bassist Jeff Chambers, who shares a long working relationship with Mel. "The arrangements were all spontaneous," says Martin. "You can hear that we were listening closely to each other, and contributing to the ongoing conversation."

As a player, "Benny was in the mature phase of his career," Martin notes, "but his playing [on this date] was fluid and exploratory. You never knew where he was going to go." As a composer, Carter is seriously underappreciated, in Mel's view: "Except for a few tunes like 'Only Trust Your Heart,' 'Key Largo,' and 'Cow Cow Boogie,' Benny's music isn't that well known, but it's up there with Ellington." Just Friends contains two of Carter's songs--"People Time" and "Elegy in Blue."

Martin timed the CD's release to coincide with Carter's centennial: he was born in New York on August 8, 1907, and died in Los Angeles on July 12, 2003, a month short of his 96th birthday.

Mel Martin's Benny Carter Tribute Band

In addition to the CD, Mel Martin plans to bring Benny Carter's music to the stage on numerous occasions this year. On 7/6 and 7/7, Mel will hold forth at the Kitano Hotel (66 Park Ave. at E. 38th Street, New York) with Don Friedman, piano; Steve LaSpina, bass; and Steve Johns, drums.

Martin has assembled a Benny Carter Centennial Tribute Band -- with Roger Kellaway, Andrew Speight, Robb Fisher, and Sylvia Cuenca -- which will be performing several August dates in California: 8/11 the Jazz & Blues Store, Carmel; 8/12 the Hamlet, Cambria; and 8/15 Yoshi's, Oakland. For the Yoshi's show, Winard Harper replaces Cuenca, and vocalist Jackie Ryan will be featured along with special guests. The tribute band, with Ryan on vocals and Jeff Marrs on drums, plays Sonoma State University's Warren Auditorium 9/8.

On Wednesday 8/8, Martin will participate in "Benny Carter's 100 Years of Music," an event at the Hollywood Bowl hosted by Quincy Jones. The bill includes the Clayton-Hamilton Orchestra, James Moody, Marlena Shaw, Roy Hargrove, and Russell Malone, among others.

And on Monday 10/15, Martin will produce (and perform in) a one-night tribute to Benny Carter at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola in New York. Carter will be inducted earlier that week into Jazz at Lincoln Center's Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame.

The Bay Area and Beyond

Mel Martin -- composer, arranger, bandleader, saxophonist, flutist -- is one of the most versatile and inventive musicians ever to emerge from the San Francisco Bay Area. In his long career, he's played a part in many of the innovative movements that have emerged from that creative community -- from the progressive rock and Latin bands of the late 1960s and '70s (Cold Blood, Azteca, Boz Scaggs) to Listen, one of the first West Coast jazz-fusion bands (which he founded in 1977), to Bebop and Beyond, a group he formed in 1983 (Eddie Marshall, John Handy, and George Cables have passed through its ranks).

Born in Sacramento in 1942, Martin took early piano and clarinet lessons, which led him to Benny Goodman and Glen Church's Jazz Rhythm & Blues radio program. The big bands passing through town (Woody Herman, Duke Ellington, Count Basie) kept his interest high. While still a teenager, Mel was fortunate enough to sit in with Wes Montgomery and his brothers.

As a music major at San Francisco State in 1962, Martin met fellow undergraduate John Handy and played in his Freedom Band. He learned to play bop with the musicians who hung out at Bop City, Soulville, the Jazz Workshop, Shelton's Blue Mirror, Jack's on Sutter, and later the Both/And. "Bop City and Soulville were my schools," he says.

In addition to his extensive recording and performing credits with his own bands and as a sideman or contractor with artists such as McCoy Tyner, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Haden, Mel has contributed as a multi-instrumentalist and composer/arranger to film and television soundtracks, and has worked for many years in jazz education as a highly respected national clinician (the Stanford Jazz Workshop as well as public schools in Marin County, where he resides).

"I've always loved music," he says, "from jazz to rock to classical, and I've been blessed to be able to make a living at it." Martin's latest project, Just Friends, gives him an opportunity to express love and appreciation for an important personal mentor and a major figure in the music's history -- Benny Carter.