Spike Robinson Live in Denver, 1991

Spike Robinson

A recent post about tenorist Spike Robinson in Marc Myers's blog JazzWax made me dust off my Robinson records and enjoy them all over again after several years. And I have many, all of them wonderful, because as Myers rightly says, "there are no bad Spike Robinson recordings." Born in Kenosha, WI, in 1930, Robinson didn't pursue a full-time career as a jazz musician until he was in his fifties. His job as a mechanical engineer paid the bills, and he simply played occasionally at nights in Colorado, mostly in the Boulder and Denver areas. He'd begun on alto saxophone and clarinet but later switched to tenor, and his playing was cast in the Four Brothers mold of Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, and Stan Getz. Robinson had a knack for ballads, but no matter what he plays, his warm tone always shines through. While in the Navy in the 1950s, he found himself in England, where he collaborated with some of the best British jazz musicians of the time, such as Victor Feldman and Johnny Dankworth, and where he even got to make his first records. Upon his return to civilian life in the United States, Robinson settled into his job as an engineer and wouldn't record again until about three decades later. His tours of the United Kingdom and other European countries in the 1980s created such a stir that he decided to quit his job and move there, making constant live appearances and recording quite prolifically for a variety of labels such as Capri, Hep, and Concord. Robinson passed away in England in 2001 at age 71.

Guitarist Mundell Lowe

One of my favorite albums by Robinson, Reminiscin' (Capri Records, 1992), captures him live at the Jazz Works in Denver in December 1991, in the company of guitarist Mundell Lowe, bassist Monty Budwig (one of his last appearances on record), and drummer Jake Hanna. This pianoless quartet setting brings out the Getz-like qualities of Robinson's playing, and both dates (December 12 and 15) find him exploring the higher registers of the tenor saxophone. The eight selections (all of them standards plus a bluesy original by Robinson) clock in at over six minutes, with plenty of opportunities for everyone to show their skills, particularly the leader and Lowe, who engage in long solos with the strong support of Budwig's bass. There are a quite a few peppy mid-tempo numbers, like the opener, "Dancing in the Dark," "The Girl Next Door," "Yours Is My Heart Alone," and a charming, Latin-flavored reading of "Without You." The excellent ballad "My Silent Love" is taken at a faster tempo than usual, but the album also showcases Robinson's breathy, Lester Young-influenced approach to slow tunes on Cole Porter's "Dream Dancing" and Rodgers and Hart's "Where or When." The album closer, Robinson's own "Blues for Sooz," is the perfect vehicle for the quartet to effortlessly delve into the blues idiom and simply have some fun playing together. Though rather forgotten today, Spike Robinson is one of the best saxophonists of the 1980s and '90s and deserves to be heard because he indeed never made a bad album.