The Mac Chrupcala Trio

At first glance I wasn’t sure I needed to hear this – yet another piano trio album, chock full of standards. I could imagine, pardon the pun, the saccharine treatment of John Lennon’s ugliest, laziest song. Another version of Summertime? No! No! But, hold up, you hear the way Mac Chrupcala’s fingers dance across the keys on I Love Paris – he has that Oscar Peterson twinkle, that Ahmad Jamal tinkle – and you hear this band, the great Bernard Purdie on drums, Jim Cammack on bass.

Purdie’s still got it – and that was reason enough for me to want to take some time with this album. Even the soft-jazz treatment of Imagine is actually rather gorgeous. Okay, it’s not my favourite thing here, I’d rather dig down on the version of Bluesette here, Mac’s piano ducking in and around the stretch of Cammack’s bass, Purdie creating the almost twisty-turny feel with his light touch. I’d rather settle in for a neatly funky version of S’Wonderful or the stateliness of I Remember You.

And actually that version of Summertime, which opens this record, is pretty great – showing you can never have too many versions if the right approach is happening; the right kind of playing.

It’s very much an easy to like, mainstream jazz trio sound; no huge risks here, nothing that isn’t safe, but it’s expertly handled. The playing is spot on. And for me it was just nice to hear that Purdie hasn’t disappeared into a world of only offering clinics and YouTube clips and rants around appearing on all of The Beatles’ records (which, of course, he did not). Here he has that inimitable shuffle, that little loping space between the hats and snare and that proud backbeat. He has enough of that attack when needed too; the dance between the toms and ride cymbal. It was nice to hear this for all of that and for the respectful versions of a bunch of old standards. I thought, at first, I didn’t need to hear them again. Well it’s always nice to be proven wrong.