Houston Person Live in Paris Houston Person

• 1 Sweet Sucker (Live) 09:10
• 2 Only Trust Your Heart (Live) 08:43
• 3 Easy Walker (Live) 07:09
• 4 The Way We Were (Live) 08:07
• 5 Lester Leaps In (Live) 05:34
• 6 Since I Fell for You (Live) 07:39
• 7 Sunny (Live) 09:02
• 8 Jean-Jaures Shuffle (Live) 03:30
• Total Runtime 58:54

Info for Houston Person Live in Paris

Houston Person is the real deal. With a lifetime of experience Houston continues to grace concert stages with his expressive style which stubbornly defies categorization. One moment he is letting loose with some hard-driving swing and the next he is caressing your ears with his mellifluous, baritonal utterances on a beautiful ballad. “I just play good music,” explains Houston. “I look for a great melody and great lyrics. Houston's preoccupation with the art of melody is on full display in this live recording captured during his appearance at the Festival Jazz a la Villette in 2019. This is Houston's first live recording in some time and it is quite an unforgettable experience, with the legendary man taking great care in putting just the right set list together for his audience, covering a wide variety of styles drawn from his remarkable career. Having recorded his first album as a leader in 1966 titled Underground Soul, coincidentally also an organ-tenor quartet, Houston Person has been a standard-bearer of so-called “soul jazz,” but that is a misnomer in Houston's case. The truth is Houston plays soulful jazz rather than “soul jazz”; music that communicates with the listener and touches the heart. How appropriate it is then, that this live recording originates from Paris, also known as the “City of Love.”

Houston Person, tenor saxophone
Ben Paterson, Hammond B-3 organ
Peter Bernstein, guitar
Willie Jones III, drums

Houston Person
born in Newberry, South Carolina in 1934, is the natural heir to the Boss Tenor crown worn so long and so well by Gene Ammons. In the more than twenty-five years that he has been a working bandleader, Person has taken his music to most points on the globe. A travelling Jazzman in an era that has found that particular species a veritable rara avis, Person does it all himself. He books his own tours, hunts up the new clubs, has the phone number of every major concert promoter on each continent and produces his own albums: truly the vertically integrated Jazzman.

If, given all this, he played mediocre tenor it would be easy to forgive him. But he doesn’t – he plays damn good tenor and it keeps getting better. One of the last proponents of the big sound, his tone has gotten bigger even as his delivery has mellowed and rounded out. And, of course, with Person you are likely to hear almost anything in terms of repertoire. He has recorded disco and gospel, pop and r&b in addition to his natural Jazz but beyond that he has an enormous and ever changing book. Nothing pedestrian or everyday for Person!

He grew up in Florence, S.C., studied at the state college there, was later named to the school’s Hall of Fame in 1999, and continued his studies at Hartt College of Music in Hartford, CT. Earlier, in the U.S. Air Force, he played with Don Ellis, Eddie Harris, Cedar Walton, and Leo Wright. Contrary to popular belief, he was never married to the late singer Etta Jones, but did spend many years as her musical partner, recording, performing and touring.

Although he has performed in the hard bop and swing genres, he is most experienced in and best known for his work in soul Jazz. Person is also known for his distinctive sassy sound and his expressive style of playing. He received the Eubie Blake Jazz Award in 1982.

He has more than 75 albums under his own name on Prestige, Westbound, Mercury, Savoy, Muse, and is currently with High Note Records. He has recorded with Charles Brown, Charles Earland, Lena Horne, Etta Jones, Lou Rawls, Horace Silver, Dakota Staton, and more.

Houston has deffine ideas about Jazz: “Well, it’s uplifting and important. And a release and a relief. That’s what it is, Jazz, so called Jazz, to me. It’s important that it’s relaxing. Something that when the end of the day comes, after a hard and frustrating day out in the world, that relieves you. Relaxes you and makes you feel good.” Person adds that all he wants is to give people “good solid melodies with some improvisation and plenty of blues feel.” He smiles, “You always want that dance feeling there, that happy, happy feeling.”

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