For those not fluent in the Lingua Franca da Cornu, or, the way horn players talk, the term Jump Street means from the top, at the beginning, right off the bat, from the left, immediately. For example, if a jazz trumpeter were to say “I knew the skirt made change from jump street.” his friends would understand that, in his opinion, the girl in question was a known purveyor of sexual commerce from the very beginning. There, that should clarify the title, but more about Groove Duke and the “IT” being nailed in a moment.

There was a time when recordings, really good recordings, were being made by really good people as a matter of routine. These recording projects came in under budget, everybody usually got paid and if they were successful, there might have been a little $omething on the back end. This was back in the days before iPods. Audio-philogically it was the Cro-Magnon era of monophonic AM radio. The mono 45 rpm record is to the mp3 as cave painting is to CGI. A friend of mine has an old Chrysler with the original tube radio and I have to say man, old-school R&B popping out the top of that single dashboard speaker still gets the hairs on my neck up and dancing.

So now, here we are in the summer of 2010. Recording budgets have become somewhat of an oddity on display in the history museum. The skill set of composing and recording digital music is approaching that of virtual Playstation auto theft with the results being a fairly accurate representation of the circumstances under which the crime was committed. Okay, that’s a bit strong, but there can be no argument that, under the heading of of self-produced recording projects, there exists a lot of crappy music parading under false pretenses.

Out of this fog and into the harbor sails the Heavy Mariner. This freshman release from Chicago’s own Groove Duke, Mark Alan Cornell, has somehow managed to corral a cracking ensemble of living, breathing musicians, singers, technical personnel and other mercenaries for next to nothing to produce a body of work that does exactly what a horn-driven R&B album should do…it makes you smile.

Heavy Mariner

Groove Duke provides plenty to love for everyone on this album. The horn arrangements are tightly written and performed While the solo playing eloquently serves the songs rather than the players egos, a welcome element and the benchmark of experienced road warriors. The Rhythm Section, capitalized out of respect to the album personnel, is a heaving beast of groove. There is nothing mechanical about this band. The true test of any Rhythm section is a slow shuffle and the depth of feel in You Better Believe It is like being tied to a chair next to a sleeping Rhinoceros. The back beat pops at the last possible instant and what seems to be a groovy little tune is actually quite sinister under the shiny facade. And let me say something about sounds. I’ve spent hours watching engineers trying to get rid of a snare drum ping. But wait til you check out Judas Love. A ping never felt so right. From the single, Stick Boy right down the line, the Rhythm Section kicks the rest of the band square in the ass and handing in a less-than-my-best-stuff performance doesn’t seem to be an option for anyone.

But let me get to what makes this album really work in the tradition of classic R&B records. Instrumentals are great and who can’t find love in their heart for Squib Cakes, Home Cookin’ and What Does It Take. But the ultimate connection with an audience happens at the vocal mic. That’s where the story unfolds, that’s where the guts get spilled, that’s where all the joy, pain, faith and details are put on display for everyone to see and hear. And it is at the vocal mic that this album makes its boldest statement. Pauli Carman, the voice, heart and soul behind Champaign’s How ‘Bout Us produced the background vocals so it will come as no shock that they are stellar in every way. The arrangements are classic and familiar without being trite and Cornell’s stories couldn’t be told without the marvelous interplay so characteristic of great R&B vocal ensembles.

Mark Cornell

Mark Cornell’s singing chops are deceptively musical. While he isn’t Al Green, Teddy Pendergrass, Donald Fagan, Sly Stone or even Wayne Cochran, his original dialect is derivative of a massive hit singles collection. But it isn’t beauty of tone in the usual sense that make Cornell’s vocals compelling. Cornell is first and foremost a musician in general and a trumpet player in particular, a combination that has proven both interesting and successful in the past. Witness Louis Armstrong, Chet Baker and Jack Sheldon for example. Of the three, only Baker had what most would consider a pleasing voice in the strictest terms, but all three are masterful singers who get the point across on a most intimate level. Accomplished Jazz musicians have a sense of intonation, time and phrasing rare even in the best golden-throated vocalists.. Cornell is cut from the same whole cloth and when he tells you a story you listen and believe. Sometimes he’s the guy across the bar and sometimes he’s sneering menacingly into your ear as in the afore-mentioned You Better Believe It. His emotions run from zero to sixty but he is always consistently “That Guy” and you just want to hear more.

Which brings me to my only real issue with this album. Does Mark Cornell see himself as a trumpet player who sings or as a singer who plays trumpet? There is never a moment on the album where I say to myself, “Damn, I wish that trumpet was louder.”  I can’t say the same for the lead vocals. There are sections where the background vocals, excellent as they are, could step back a few feet from the front of the stage. But I can’t blame them because it feels as if Cornell is having an “I’m really just a trumpet guy doing the best I can.” moment. I got news for you Mr. Cornell. You’re busted! No matter what you think, you sing your ass off so step up and accept a 5dB boost in the mix for your bad self.

Getting back to the craft of making records that sound and, more importantly, feel good, Heavy Mariner kicks the hell out of some projects costing a boatload of money. Everyone involved with this record knew exactly what they were doing and did it well. It sounds like just a good time weekend in the studio with a bunch of pals but anyone in the know will tell you how much is involved in an album like this.

Heavy Mariner from Groove Duke started out as a Sellaband project but Mark Cornell made it happen on his own. Above all, the album makes you smile. Yeah, there is the obligatory instrumental to open the show. But my face started cracking open about halfway through the drum fill that starts I Get The Picture and I was a stepping, grinning mess for the duration.

Get yourself a copy, go find someone with an old mono sound system, preferably in the dashboard of a mid-sixties chrome-encrusted land-yacht and roll the windows down. Just don’t forget to floss because you’re gonna to be grinnin’. The “IT” is old school R&B and Groove Duke is nailin’ it right from Jump Street.

Establishing an instantly recognizable identity can be the most elusive ingredient in building a career as a young musical artist. We see the difficulty every time we tune in to American Idol. Young artists competing for public recognition struggle every week to be whatever it is they think will keep them on the show another week. They adopt new hairstyles, change their demeanor, paint their nails, get a new tattoo and make the sort of unfortunate wardrobe choices that could easily backfire in any posh big city nightspot. No matter how well or badly these aspiring idols are able to perform, I always want to ask the question, “Who the hell are you anyway? I mean…really…who?”

Who Are These People

Now, we can talk all we want about artistic integrity and all of that sort of balderdash. But if you are a musical performer attempting to enter the professional ranks as a recording artist, the issue of commercial marketability is inescapable and must be addressed. Every public image, every word, spoken, written and sung, every video, every note produced is a commercial advertisement of your product whether you like it or not. You are perceived as being the sum of that which you allow to be put before the public.

In today’s marketplace, the highest priority is given to immediacy of product identification. When you go to the convenience store to buy a pack of breath mints, the box that looks the coolest will win every time. The mints might taste like horseshoe nails and there might be the most amazing breath mints only inches away in a plain brown wrapper. But by the time you realize you’ve bought the box instead of the mints your money is already on the way to corporate headquarters. This distasteful form of hucksterism has sadly become the engine driving public underwear-washing displays like American Idol. The contestants who are fortunate enough to make the show spend so much energy trying to be everything to everybody that we never really get a chance to know them. Am I seeing an artist who has average abilities in multiple genres, or am I watching a victim of multiple personality disorder unravel like Sally Field’s Sybil as she tries to decide on which of her sixteen personalities will be the flavor of the day?

It’s not that I’m knocking American Idol, nor do I wish to downplay the need for effective marketability. But if you think about it, of the many talented artists who have managed any sort of  post-Idol career, the most publicly accepted are the ones who showed their cards early on. Carrie Underwood has always been a wholesome Country Artist even though she had to prove herself relatively competent in multiple genres during her competition. Chris Daughtry is another example of an artist we felt we knew from the start. Adam Lambert on the other hand, could be one of the most impressive singers in the show’s history. But will his chameleon-like ability to transform into anything that serves the moment be an asset or a liability. Would true Country fans accept Adam’s interpretation of a Dolly Parton classic? Do die-hard Queen fans really take Adam’s performance with the band as anything more than a novelty. There’s no question that, purely on a technical level, Adam sings higher and louder than many of the great Motown artists. But would real Motown fans swallow an Adam Lambert remake of What’s Going On?Singing ability aside, you just want to ask yourself “Who the hell is this guy…really?”

There can be a wide gulf between great musical artists and great entertainers. Great artists can also be considered great entertainers but great entertainers are not necessarily great musical artists. Tina Turner and Elvis Presley are the epitome of the former while Sammy Davis Jr. and Wayne Newton are examples of the latter. Time and public acceptance will answer as to where Adam Lambert’s contributions will fall in this equation.

The Real Rod?

Two other examples of artistic multiple personality disorder spring to mind. I attended the American Music Awards a few years ago when Rod Stewart took the stage to perform a medley from his Great American Songbook album. You had to be a true blue Rod Stewart fan to keep your pre-show h’ordeuvres from making a curtain call. And Michael McDonald wouldn’t have lost one molecule of career luster had he let someone else make a spiritless remake of Motown classics. There are just some things that don’t need to be done. I admit that Stewart and McDonald were established superstars and had a right to do as they pleased. Established stars can remake themselves to varying degrees of success over the length of a long career. But for an unknown artist to morph across genres while compiling material geared to attract industry attention is a mistake.

The Dream Team

A good pal of mine mentors aspiring recording artists seeking fame on different web-based platforms like AKAmusic and Sellaband. His DreamTeam members are at the stage at which they must make the choices and decisions which will define their artistic identities to potential fans with whom they may never have personal contact. The era of booking a showcase gig and padding the house with friends and relatives is over. Music lovers can search the web and find the music they like from an ever increasing pool of talent. So, how should these artists proceed? How can one artist become the sought-after product desired over millions of others offered for consideration?

For these up-and-coming then, there is the question of what to do, what to do? The first thing I suppose is to decide what you are. Are you a singer, a songwriter, a pianist, a guitarist? Is there one aspect of your talent that holds court over the others? Does the interaction between your singing and playing embellish or detract from your performance? Are you ready to admit that there may be a difference between the genre that you enjoy as opposed to the genre in which you are most capable? Are you a Rock singer in an R&B body or is there a Country heart beating in your Alt-Rock chest? These are some questions that have to do with what’s on the inside and only you can answer them.

What’s inside will eventually make its way to the surface. So what condition is your outside in? Do you dress the part? And if you do, is it just a part or is this who you really are? Did you get a tattoo to show your individuality, or did you do it because you didn’t want to be left out? Do you take a magazine to the hairdresser to give an example of what you want to look like, or do you put a pair of underpants on your head to keep your hair out of your eyes as you hover over your laptop writing your heart out.

Appearing onstage can be a matter of playing a role, wearing a costume or playing pretend. But when all you have between you and your public is a set of headphones it makes being somebody more important than being Like somebody. And when a truly great artist hits that first note you don’t need to see a driver’s license or passport to know who they are.

Believe me when I tell you that I don’t have any answers. But I’m still left with one important question…Who the hell are you anyway?

Is writing a song an art resulting from divine inspiration or is it a craft accomplished by technical know-how and repetitious practice? Arguments can be made for both concepts and numerous examples given of inspired songwriters with limited technical training. But for the young aspiring musician of today with a modern arsenal of digital music making tools at hand, what if inspiration falls short? Wouldn’t it serve young musicians to put inspiration on hold for a moment and explore the craft of musical construction in order to build a more powerful vocabulary. Then, when the coconut of inspiration cracks open a head full of ideas, the aspiring songsmith will be able to decide which of the many available options are most suited to convey artistic intentions most effectively.

One of the biggest obstacles to overcome in becoming a songwriter is the notion that every note issuing from the pen is sacrosanct. One must come to grips with the idea that out of a hundred songs, maybe a handful will be meaningful. Writing the rejected material however, is far from a waste of time. Indeed, it is precisely the time spent writing embarrassing garbage which results in the ability to recognize and sort out what works from what doesn’t. Think of it as doing a computer search. The first step your computer takes in looking for a file is to eliminate the irrelevant files and narrow down the areas to search effectively. In other words, if you are searching for toilet paper, you already know that the frozen food aisle is a waste of time. Yet it is not uncommon for inexperienced songwriters to waste time and energy digging under the frozen peas and pizza for something being displayed for half price with a coupon in the paper aisle.

Here is a simple exercise in songwriting that is painfully basic but time well spent. It is an exercise in simplicity and exploits the fact that many popular song structures are much simpler than we would care to admit. Let’s take three basic chords for our harmonic vocabulary. E Major, A Major and D Major. If we write the three chords in every possible sequential combination, we have the following results:

1) E, A, D    2) E, D, A    3) A, D, E    4) A, E, D    5) D, A, E    6) D, E, A.

Write each chord sequence on a piece of paper and throw all six pieces into a hat. Now take one piece of paper from the hat as you would in choosing the winning raffle ticket. Play this combination of chords in the given sequence for at least five minutes. Don’t try to make anything more out of it than it is. Just set the drum machine, sequencer or egg timer to five minutes and let the chords decide the groove. After five minutes, try singing a simple melody over the chords. Let your ears do the thinking and don’t try to come up with something that the world has never heard before. If you have a short lyrical idea in mind, go ahead and try to incorporate it but the idea is to build a melodic vocabulary inspired by three simple chords. You can sing “Granny wears army boots” for all I care, just explore as many melodic ideas as possible.

Now, choose another piece of paper and repeat the exercise until you’ve gone through all six chord progressions. If you can refrain from thinking too much you should be able to get through the entire hatful in an hour. Then, to make things more interesting, choose two pieces at a time and start your timer.

For young bands slugging it out in the garage as to whose idea has the most value, this exercise will not only expand everyone’s abilities but also serve to let every band member contribute to the group’s musical vocabulary. Each member can pull a sequence and the whole band can play the sequence as a unit. In this way, every member has the chance to direct the band through their sequence in turn. Whoever pulls the paper out of the hat gets to produce the track so to speak, and the combination of everyone’s input will increase the band’s ability to write as a unit.

“Three chords” you say. And I answer emphatically, “Yep! Three simple chords.” As a matter of fact, if you do the exercise, you’ll find that about a million songs will come to mind. And the reason they will come to mind is that they were hit records…and that is the whole point, isn’t it? To learn how to write a hit song. Artists like Van Morrison, Neil Diamond, CSNY, Bob Dylan on and on and on haven’t been embarrassed to express their artistic inspiration through the use of just three chords and neither should you. And when the times comes to get really tricky and need to say your piece with five or six chords, you won’t be rummaging around in the freezer wondering where the damned toilet paper went.