Hold It Right There

Journeyman jazz guitarist Chris Cortez has put out a variety of albums in a variety of styles on his own Blue Bamboo Music label over the years, most recently the self-titled contemporary jazz album by his band Groovopolis. Hold It Right There, his fourth solo album, is a collection of standards played with a piano/bass/drums backup band, plus a few horns here and there, and, on ten out of 13 tracks, Cortez's vocals. In his liner notes, he says he's been playing this kind of music for decades and that the album "represents a typical set you might hear on any night" if you caught him playing in New Orleans. He also offers the collection "in tribute" to the kind of names more usually associated with these tunes, among them Wes Montgomery, Joe Williams, Tony Bennett, and Jon Hendricks, and acknowledges, "They set the bar very high." Indeed they do. And while one might easily enjoy a set of these performances in a club over a drink or two, it is another thing to commit them to the recording process and thus offer them in competition to such predecessors. Certainly, Cortez sings "All Right, Ok, You Win" warmly in his grainy voice, but, of course, he doesn't hold a candle to Williams. He is better when he is trying something different, such as incorporating James Taylor's "Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight" into the jazz idiom or comically rendering a risqué parody of "Pennies from Heaven" as "Benny's in Heaven." Hold It Right There is an ideal album for the artist to sell in between sets on one of those New Orleans nights he describes. On its own, it is pleasant, but slight.