DEEP BLUh E}OBEIY BFIOOM GREG ROCKINGHAM CHRIS FOFIEMAN 0HtHl\l ,'a' L f:,1;jjJ:,',,1 The music of Stevie Wonder left an indelible imprint on the minds of Bobby Broom, Chris Foreman, and Greg Rockingham while they were growing in the 1960s and '70s. Although all three musicians would come to focus on jazz as adults, ratherthan on pop and R&8, Wonder's songs were simply too sophisticated, melodically and harmonically, to forget. With Wondertul!, the Chicago-based Deep Blue Organ Trio's fourth CD and second for Origin Records, guitarist Broom, organist Foreman, and drummer Rockingham pay homage to Wonder with nine of his compositions rendered anew in the jazz organ trio tradition of which they have become among the world's most prominent purveyors. "Stevie was a huge influence on all of us," Broom states. "Most of my close friends were really into music long before I became a musician. I just remember anticipating his next release and everybody running and grabbing them up. Every Stevie release was an event, from Talking Book to Innervisions to Fullfíllingness' First Finale. That period in the early Seventies was monumental in terms of what he gave to us in that generation." Five of the selections on Wonderfull are drawn from the three aforementioned albums: "You've Got It Bad Girl" from L972's Talking Book, "Jesus Children of America" and "Golden Lady" from 1973's Innervisions, and "You Havent Done Nothin"'and "Ain't No Use" from L974's Fullfillingness' First Finale. "As" first appeared on the 1976 album Songs in the Key of Life. "My Cherie Amour," which Deep Blue does as a ballad, was a hit single for Wonder in 1969. "If You Really Love Me" was a hit single in L97L. Wonder never recorded "Tell Me Something Good" himself, but rather wrote it for Rufus featuring Chaka Khan, giving the group its first Top 10 single ever in 7974. "We wanted to find the right material and focused on ways to keep the organ trio sound honest and the way Deep Blue plays intact and do Stevie's music justice," Broom says. "We wanted to be creative without going overboard or changing things just for the sake of changing them. We wanted to get the essence of the songs, do a little tweaking and go." 1di 4 "We listened to the songs individually first and made sure that we understood what was going on within them, and then tried to come up with some type of idea of how to play them in a different vein," Rockingham adds. "We made sure that we understood the words of each song so that we could play the melodies true to what Stevie was saying." While taking some liberties with the material-transforming, for instance, "Golden Lady" into a waltz with Broom playing the melody in octaves-the trio retains many t'You of the nuances of Wonder's original interpretations, On Haven't Done Nothin'," the trio uses a repeating three-note riff, sung by the Jackson 5 as "doo-doo-wop" on Wonder's recording, to help propel the funky groove. And for "Asr" Foreman borrows licks that Herbie Hancock had played on Rhodes piano on Wonder's original. "I love Chris's reading of the melodies, just the referencing of little details that Stevie actually sang as riffs and classic bits of the tunes that are very meaningful to us as fans, listeners, and musicians," Broom says. "His picking up on those things just kinda lit up the process." Broom, Foreman, and Rockingham first played together in 1992 and officially formed the Deep Blue Organ Trio in 2000. Wonderful! is their fourth recording, following 2OA4's Deep Blue Bruise and 2006's Goin'to Town: Live at the Green Mill, both on Delmark Records, and 2OO7's Folk Music on Origin Records. For the past nine years, when not on tour, they've been the Tuesday night attraction at the Green Mill, an historic Chicago bar where Al Capone once had a regular booth. Award-winning music biographer David Ritz, who wrote the booklet notes for Wonderful!, was blown away when he first saw Deep Blue at the Green Mill. "I broadcast the good news to all my friends," Ritz writes. "I said,'Chris Foreman is the baddest organist in the land. He breathes blues like we breathe air. Bobby Broom is killing me with his outlandish chops and ridiculously good taste. Greg Rockingham has the pocket all sewn up. These guys are playing ballads that have me weeping, blues that have me moaning, grooves that have me jumping." Besides appearing at such leading jazz clubs as Scullers in Boston, Dizzy's CIub Coca-Cola in New York, and Cecil's in West Orange, New Jersey, and at festivals in the U.S. and Europe, the Deep Blue Organ Trio recently has been opening select U.S. concert dates for Steely Dan, including three weeks in November 2009 and two in July 2011. Broom, Foreman, and Rockingham were unsure of what kind reaction they'd get from Steely Dan's fans when they first opened for the jazz-influenced pop group at the Chicago Theater in 2008. "We got out there in the middle of this big stage, and Chris hit a high note on the organ and played his little introduction on the first tune, and the crowd went nuts," Broom recalls. "We were so grateful and so thrilled to get that kind of response. It was really cool." 2di4 Bobby Broom, perhaps best known for his membership in tenor saxophone titan Sonny Rollins's band in the early and mid-1980s and again from 2005 to 2010, was born in Harlem on January 18, 1961. He got his first taste of jazz at around age 10 when his father brought home a copy of organist Charles Earland's Black Talk album. Some years later, in the late Eighties and early Nineties, Broom worked as Earland's guitarist and appeared on his albums Front Burner (1988) and Third Degree Burn (L989). His other sideman credits include work with Tom Browne, Hugh Masekela, Kenny Burrell's Jazz Guitar Band, five nights with Miles Davis, five and a half years with Dr. John, and a 2011 European tour with Ron Carter's Golden Striker Trio. Since 1981, Broom has recorded 10 albums under his own name for the GRP, Arista, Críss Cross, Premonition, Delmark, and Origin labels. Greg Rockingham practically has the Hammond B-3 organ running through his veins. Born in Waukegan, Illinois, on September29,1959, he is the son of organist David Rockingham, leader of the David Rockingham Trio, which scored a national pop hit in 1963 with a boogaloo-flavored instrumental titled "Dawn." Greg began sitting in with the trio when he was 5 and was a regular member from age 9 to 16. After graduating high school, he toured for eight years with the Guy Lombardo ghost band and for eight months with the Glenn Miller ghost band, then spent a decade with Charles Earland, on whose albums Blowing the Blues (L997) and Jazz Organ Summit (1998) he appeared. He owns two Hammond B-3 organs, as well as four Leslie speakers, and transports the organ and speakers to all of the Deep Blue Organ Trio's gigs for longtime friend Chris Foreman. Foreman, who was born blind in Chicago on September 16, L957, started playing piano at age 7 but became enamored of the jazz organ as a teenager. "I was fascinated with the sound of the organ and how different sounds could be obtained from it," he explains. He made his recording debut in 1981 on blues guitarist Albeft Coflins's Don't Lose Your Cool album and later cut two CDs with the Mighty Blues Kings. Inspired by such organ greats as Jimmy McGriff, Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff, Charles Earland, Richard "Groove" Holmes, and Dick Hyman, Foreman is something of a historian of organ jazz. Earlier Jazz organ versions of Stevie Wonder tunes, he recalls, were McGriff's recordings of "Uptight" and "Signed, Sealed, and Delivered," an upbeat treatment of "You've Got It Bad Girl" by Holmes, and a rendition of "My Cherie Amour" by Earland. "Ours is more mellow and subdued," Foreman says of the Deep Blue Organ Trio's arrangement of "My Cherie Amour." "I like ours better." Foreman and Rockingham had been playing together for several years in various bands before they met Broom. "There's a chemistry that the three of us have that's special," the guitarist says, Foreman concurs. "We listen to each other," he states. "Some things we don't even talk about. If you don't talk about it so much and just let the music happen, then it happens. Sometimes the results are amazing, sometimes they're funny, sometimes they're surprising. That's what I like about it-the chemistry, the camaraderie." 3di 4 That special chemistry is quite evident as Broom, Foreman, and Rockingham lovingly reinterpret nine selections from the Stevie Wonder songbook on their new Origin Records release. Their organ jazz take on his music, to borrow from the CD's title, is truly wonderful! WOnderfUI! lorigin Records) Media Contact: Street Date: August t6,20tl Terri Hinte www.deepblueorqantrio.com PO Box 5054, Richmond, CA 94805 www.twitter.com/bobbybroom 5LA-234-8781, 510-207-2t59 h udba@sbcqlobal. net Booking: Maxine S. Harvard 7942W. Bell Rd., Glendale, AZ 85308 623-566-s336 maxineha rvard @cox. net Booking in Europe: EMMECI S.R.L. Piazza G.