Crosscurrents
By Tony Green

To the average jazz fan, the term "standard" means Gershwin, Garner, Kern, Strayhorn, Waller. To Charlie Hunter, a standard is anything you want it to be, all the way up to Kurt Cobain. Exhibit A: the Charlie Hunter Trio's 6/8 jazz recasting of Nirvana's "Come As You Are" contained on their latest release, Bing, Bing, Bing! (Blue Note).

"A lot of Jazz cats aren't addressing contemporary music," say's the 27-year-old Hunter. "One of the reasons young kids aren't into jazz is because there is no cultural context for them. Gershwin and Kern aren't the standards of my generation. Right now, I'm working on a Stevie Wonder tune, even though people have raped and pillaged his songs. Elvis Costello is another great songwriter, as is Sly Stone. There are some great country songs out there. I like to think of what I do as improvisation-oriented pop music."

Not surprisingly, Hunter has played in a variety of settings. He served a tenure with progressive hip-hoppers Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, before Les Claypool's Prawn Song Records released the Charlie Hunter Trio's 1994 self-titled debut. Before completing Bing, Bing, Bing! Hunter also cut an album with his side project, TJ Kirk. That band, which also features guitarists Will Bernard and John Schott, takes it's name from the three artists whose catalog comprises their entire repertoire: Thelonious Monk, James Brown, and jazz sax titan Rashaan Roland Kirk. Hunter says he comes to eclecticism naturally. "

I grew up in Berkeley, California, listening to everything," says the guitarist. "I met a lot of people from all areas of life and wound up listening to everything that was in the American musical diet, from the Police to Seventies disco records, which were extremely unhip at the time. Later, I listened to my mother's old blues records, like Robert Johnson and Leadbelly. "

Hunter's uniqueness extends to his instrumentation: his trio includes a drummer (Jay Lane) and a saxophonist (Dave Ellis), but no bass player. Hunter plays a specially designed eight-string axe that allows him, with the aid of a unique finger-picking style, to play bass and lead at the same time.

"I keep my basslines really simple," Hunter says. "My melody lines aren't actually that complex, either. I have to keep things on that level so I don't get tied up."

Hunter's beat-conciousness and modern pop influences have led him to be labeled "acid jazz." It's a tag which leaves him scratching his multi-faceted head.

"I don't know what acid jazz is," he says. "I think that they just have to label something to make it easier for people to understand."