Green Tea
The correlation between the words magical and musical is much closer than one would think. It's hard to fully comprehend exactly what force music can have on humans even though it has been known to drastically change people's lives and is a healing force when used for medicinal purposes.
Just imagine for a moment a mild-mannered young man with a Clark Kent demeanor stepping inside a metaphysical phone booth only to be transformed into a screaming demon of the Hammond B-3 organ known to other musicians as Scorch!The journey began in Massillon , Ohio and wound up in the great state of Texas where an incubation took place while attending North Texas State University (now U.N.T.), an acknowledged breeding ground for first-rate players especially those of the jazz persuasion. Scorch has been a Texas resident since 1977! Fast-forward to the present, where our protagonist now has three previous solo albums under his belt and some major label credits as a side man. He has charted at jazz radio top 20 Gavin on two of his recordings and Billboard #17 Rock charts with Omar and The Howlers. Scorch is a current voting member of the recording academy "the Grammy’s." His new C.D. /DVD, The Tone Generator is scheduled to be released in June 2007. He has toured extensively with numerous Texas rock & blues masters. Scorch was the keyboardist for Columbia Records recording artists Omar and The Howlers on Stevie Ray Vaughan's Live Alive and Soul to Soul world tours. He also played with Delbert McClinton and Rock Hall-of-Famer Bo Diddly, Scorch has performed live on stage with jazz burners such as Wynton Marcelas and Dewey Redman just to name a few. Scorch is widely respected in his home turf of Texas and resides in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. He also has several movie and television sound tracks to his credit. As a keyboardist Scorch has appeared on MTV in a heavy rotation music video and has also appeared in network television commercials for Miller Lite. Check out vitalorgan.org ericscortia.com or Google him for more details. Eric's first instrument was the organ and he still prefers his vintage 350 pound B-3 to any of the new or supposedly improved models. Although an excellent pianist with a stable of students to prove it, at heart he's a dyed-in-the-wool hardcore organist to the bone.And now the cast. Texas tenorist par excellence and longtime Scortia collaborator Marchel Ivery carries a long list of heavy credentials from touring with Art Blakey in an unrecorded edition of the Jazz Messengers to playing with piano icon Red Garland in his final years. The saxman has cut three dates under his own name for the Leaning House and co-led an album with David "Fathead" Newman for the Dutch Timeless imprint. His presence here underscores the importance of unheralded regional jazzmen as some of the best kept secrets of the music scene.Like Ivery, guitarist Henry Johnson has helmed recording for various small labels but he is perhaps best known to listeners from his tenure with pianist Ramsey Lewis. A consummate practitioner of the six-string jazz lineage, he can roar down the blues highway like a souped-up deuce on Thunder Road or gently strum mentholated chords on a dreamy ballad. Always in complete command of his axe, the almost telepathic sensibility exhibited herein proves this isn't his first meeting with the organist.Manning the drum kit is Greg Rockingham, a skilled drummer who brings new meaning to the musician’s term "kickin' tubs" as he plays with more kinetic energy than Ben Franklin's kite. No stranger to the bandstand or the organ milieu, his name can be found listed as the pocket keeper on sessions by Charles Earland and numerous others.The playlist can be easily halved into two distinct categories; the ever-popular boogaloo, which has been a soul jazz staple since the sixties, and straight-ahead.Continuing in that vein, Ivery and Scortia are two straight-up, flat-out smokers. Check out Eric and Marchel's trippy voicing taken at a brisk tempo with skillet-hot solos from all hands including gait keeper Rockingham whose fiery pyrotechnics lead everyone back into the theme.A thought in closing, it is fitting that Eric's chart "Green Tea" is a paean to a musician that wasn't afraid to use repetition as another tension-building device in his solo arsenal. That aspect of Scorch's style impressed me the most and it can be heard in his improvisation on many tracks. To my mind he is the only contemporary organist exploring it fully. That and the fact most younger organ players seem overly worried that they may appear unhip is exactly the thing, other than its musical value, that stamps it with certified hipness. So kick back, hit the play button and let this collection of Scorch faves bring you a sonic smile.Larry HollisRegular ReviewerCadence Magazine
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