One Ax, Two Mics
Three Rising Blue Note Acts Hit Town
by Jackson Griffith

While a few pipe-smoking pendants and urbane sophisticates will tell you that the finest days of jazz are historysville, the reality is that the collision of unhinged creativity and egalitarian blowing that is America's coolest contribution to global culture is, indeed, still a going thing.

And while Blue Note, the onetime indie jazz label that pretty much defined '50's hard bop, has been acquired by, in turn, bigger corporate fish Liberty Records, United Artists, EMI and now AOL Time Warner, it still signs and helps develop some promising artists within the genre.

Three of them play the Crest Theatre this Sunday night. Charlie Hunter, an innovative guitarist -now based in Brooklyn, grew up around Berkeley; he's a chameleonic stylist who once teamed up with Michael Franti in the early '90's group Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy. Patricia Barber, a singer and pianist from Chicago, has an album of standards coming out next month that showcases her voice, which is quietly stunning in a Japanese brush painting sort of way; Nightclub (on Premonition/Blue Note) is, for those of you who prefer low-volume thrills, a velvet-gloved knockout. And, speaking of velvet, as in fog, fellow Chicagoan Kurt Elling is kinda like Mel Torme with the edge of a young Sinatra-albeit with a little too much of a postrnodemist Harry Connick Jr.-Gap-ad sensibility to capture the true boccie-ball enthusiast.

As for the headliner, his recently released long-player, the eponymously titled Charlie Hunter, is percussive, swinging, at times appropriately meaty, crystalline or extraterrestrial. Hunter's career arc -seven albums' worth, now-is a fine argument against the idea that nothing worthwhile came out of "acid jazz," which some critics have slagged off as a hip-hop flavored textural wrinkle on post- fusion business jazz. Indeed, there's a surprising amount of depth to be found here, and the essence of Hunter's fretboard idols-among them Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery and Pat Martino--shine with luminosity.

Pop music, though, it ain't. "We're living in the post-music age," Hunter says, laughing, before explaining how to avoid turning into a clone of Dr. Jivenstein: "I just do what I do and keep a positive attitude," he explains. "I try to stay away from MTV , just because I feet like it burns my brain, y'know? It just doesn't make me feel good. And I try to concentrate oil things that are organic and, like, uplift me spiritually in a musical way."

Charlie Hunter the album has a nice organic flow, with a subtext that's, um, spiritual. On "Rendezvous Avec la Verite," he pumps his guitar's signal through a whirling Leslie speaker, which shaves most of the edge from his attack; the resulting Hammond B-3 guitar tone lets the angular melody ooze gracefully over the congafied vodun beat. Nightcrawlingmusic, podna. So's "Al Green," which gets the B-3 treatment. These are spliced with cuts "Two for Bleu" and the lap-dancer shuffle "Nothin' but Trouble," which adhere more strictly to a Blue Note-blowing-session aesthetic. Minimalism ("Cloud Splitter"), Monk (a cover of "Epistrophy") and solo gospel-soul (Danny Hathaway's "Someday We'll All Be Free") also get their due.

"The idea was to kinda do something like the Duo record I did with Leon [Parker, his percussionist], but have a lot more colors. It has the same kind of vibe, but it's just a lot bigger." On this tour, though, Hunter will be accompanied by a drummer and a percussionist; no horns.

While Hunter's fingerwork sounds like a liner extension of jazz guitar flow, he executes it on an ax that has eight strings; a standard guitar has six. (For the curious, here's his tuning: "E-A-D," he says, "like the lower three strings of a bass, and then A-D-G-B-E, like the higher five strings of the guitar.")