The novelist and musician Wesley Stace has a similar story: “Aged sixteen, and full only of rock and pop music, I came upon Carla Bley by chance through a Pink Floyd solo project, Nick Mason’s ‘Fictitious Sports,’ which I only bought because the vocals were by my favorite singer, Robert Wyatt, once of Soft Machine. From the first notes onward, I was never quite the same again. The deadly serious yet hilarious “Spangled Banner Minor and Other Patriotic Songs,” from that 1977 recording, celebrates and defaces several nationalistic themes, beginning with the American national anthem recast as Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Sonata. (The two were married.) My small home-town library also had a copy of “The Carla Bley Band: European Tour 1977,” a superb disk of rowdy horn soloists carousing through instantly memorable Bley compositions and arrangements. I began listening to her in high school when I was enamored with the pianist Paul Bley, whose seminal nineteen-sixties LPs were filled with Carla Bley compositions. This trio has played together on and off for years, with a couple of discs to their credit, and they're well worth catching on every visit.Every jazz fan knows the name of Carla Bley, but her relentless productivity and constant reinvention can make it difficult to grasp her contribution to music. Maybe the most "out," ferocious number was Scofield's "Over Big Top," a one-chord vamp that pushed the funk to the max, featured a tight-loose declamatory Stewart solo and then Scofield bringing it down for some finger-nail scraping on a single string that suggested both an African "talking" drum and an R&B chicken scratch. There was lovely lyricism in Carla Bley's "Lawns," Scofield looping his cadenza with some "backwards" guitar, then another uptempo classic, Miles Davis's "Budo."On the cadenza of "Someone To Watch Over Me," Scofield worked a little oom-pah-pah merry-go-round figure into his loops, then came Parker's "Confirmation" and another furious tempo. Scofield's "Chicken Dog" ("not about an animal") was hard, edgy jazz funk, with drummer Bill Stewart coming in behind the beat for some witty floor-tom hits and Swallow playing big strumming funk chords. Then came a new Scofield number, "Like This But Better"-– medium tempo, featuring one of Swallow's upper-register singing solos. They opened with a reconfigured heavily bebopping version of the standard "How Deep Is the Ocean," way uptempo and unrecognizable if not for Scofield's post-song announcement.
And it doesn't hurt that he's capable of onstage self-deprecating comedy in addition to the wit and humor of his music. Scofield is, rightfully, considered a modern-jazz-guitar deity, with a fluency that extends from standards to funk to alternatey spiky and lyrical originals. This was the first of two nights at the Regattabar for the trio (they play two sets tonight, Friday), and they were stupendous. He then calmly ripped the music into long shreds and the band went into a ripping version of a Charlie Parker tune. The bassist was going to tough it out – "maybe if I minor-third it," Scofield projected.
"But Steve's such a good guy," Scofield said. Walking back to his mic, Scofield explained that this was a piece he'd written out years ago – and the notes were all wrong.
Not long into his encore during the first set at the Regattabar Thursday night, guitarist John Scofield stopped the band, walked across the stage and took the sheet music from Steve Swallow's stand.