Saxophonist Ron Blake Streamlines & Simplifies His Musical Delivery With ‘Scratch Band,’ Due August 8 On 7tēn33 Productions

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data-original-title=”” title=””>John Hadfield, and applying that folklike sonic reduction to the rhythmic and melodic sensibilities that surrounded Blake growing up in the U.S. Virgin Islands. (In another unusual turn, Blake is on baritone saxophone—nominally his secondary axe—than his primary tenor.)

“There’s not a huge need to embellish with this music,” the leader says of his native quelbe music tradition. “It’s driven by the beauty of the melodies and good, danceable rhythms.” That philosophy stood Blake and SCRATCH Band well when they first convened to record in New York in the winter of 2021, during the pandemic, when quarantine and social distancing protocols were still in effect. Downscaled by necessity, the musicians duly focused on plainspoken, soulful tunes with immediate and obvious appeal, like “Bassman,” the calypso classic that wears its big dance groove right on the surface; the sensuous Cuban pseudo-lament “La Conga de Juana”; or the head-nodding island funk of “Appointment.”

By no means, however, does the music on the album give the SCRATCH Band an easy way out. Groover though it is, the tenor-bass duet “Another Level” gives both Blake and Rogers a serious workout. Slow-burning closer “April’s Fool” is packed with tricky rhythmic nuances, and the elegant pair of “Body and Soul” and “Lift Every Voice and Sing” dare the musicians to find something new to say with two of the most covered songs in the canon. (They deliver handsomely on both fronts, Blake finding fresh sweetness on the former while Rogers and Hadfield tap into waves of grace and dignity on the Black National Anthem.) The secret to the simplicity of SCRATCH Band is that it gives its artists more room for discovery, not less.

About Ron Blake

Ron Blake was born September 7, 1965 in the Santurce district of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and grew up in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. Blake’s father was an architect who loved jazz and Latin music, and passed that passion down to the youngest of his four children.

First trying his hand at guitar as an 8-year-old, Blake by 10 had settled on the saxophone, playing alto in the school band. By 14, he had come far enough on the instrument to attend Michigan’s famous Interlochen Arts Camp for three straight summers. His success in the Arts Camp led Blake to enroll at Interlochen’s Arts Academy, where he completed his last two years of high school before attending Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, then making the transition to the ever- fertile Chicago scene.

Aside from a brief return to St. Thomas, Blake remained in Chicago until 1990, when he took a position at the University of South Florida; two years after that, he made his way to New York and found himself in the quintet of the young trumpet prodigy