Bob Szajner - 'Down Beatrice Street' Review

Most people spend time with their significant others on their anniversaries. Not pianist Bob Szajner, though. On the day of his 18th wedding anniversary, he and a couple of friends teamed up for a six-hour-long marathon jam session which resulted in The Bob Szajner Triad, a three record set from which Down Beatrice Street derives.

On Oct. 8, 1978, Szajner, his old school friend, Roy Brooks, and Brooks’ bass man, Ray McKinney, went to a ranch house basement recording studio on Beatrice Street in Livonia, Michigan, to record Szajner’s original compositions. There’s nothing exactly out of the ordinary about a jam session like this. But what if I told you that of the 27 tunes they performed that day, not one had ever been played or rehearsed before? Or that there were no second takes or audio enhancements? Therefore, if you heard this archived gathering, you would hear what they were playing for the first time from the sheet music that Szajner provided them. This album was essentially recorded in the moment with improv solos thrown in based on how the musicians were feeling at that particular time. Pretty impressive, right?

In theory, this is absolutely wild, but in practice, it’s not all that thrilling. Perhaps the arrangements and compositions were mind-blowing for those years, but I’d prefer to have been there listening live because the magic of such an unheard-of performance doesn’t translate well in the recording. Despite the fact that 15 of the 27 tracks were chosen to be digitally remastered for this collection, there’s a muffled, almost stuffy, quality which prevents the listener from really engaging with the material. In addition, there’s not much variety, and the songs all sound alike. After the first few tracks, you get bored switching back and forth between mid-tempo jazz and ballads that are so slow, you feel yourself getting dusty. Some funk and swinging bebop in tracks like “Meeting Competition,” “Flying Horace” and “The Parson” injects a bit of life into the disc, but I’m afraid it’s not enough.

I hate to be so harsh since Szajner was quite the talent, having opened for Billie Holiday and played with Charlie McPherson, Donald Byrd, among others. However, Down Beatrice Street is more suited as background music for a dinner or similar event where people are not really paying that much attention.