For many years now, the sound of an instrument like the saxophone gets often linked to music genres like Jazz or maybe, at times, Fusion and occasionally, to Soul music too. It takes a proper Master of said instrument to be able to shift from a genre to another with convincing credibility and one of the very few artists able to make such effortlessly smooth transitions, thanks to his widely recognised talent and musical ability, it's the Las Vegas based singer/songwriter and Saxophonist Supremo Jimmy Carpenter, one of the very few artists in the contemporary music scene able to switch from Soul to Blues, R&B, Fusion and Funk maintaining always the same high level of musicianship on each passing record.
Unanimously appreciated by the music press, his fellow musician colleagues and fans as one of the absolute best Saxophonists in the business and a very accomplished live performer and recording artist, Carpenter has released, as a solo artist and in the last 15 years, 5 albums, with the last 2 releases in particular, respectively called Soul Doctor (2019) and The Louisiana Record (2022), receiving very high praises not only in the United States but also in many European countries.
The Greensboro, North Carolina-born singer/songwriter must have thought that the time was right, in 2024, for him to start working on a new project, a record that would have pitched exactly, as always is the case with Carpenter's music, a true reflection of where the Saxophone Maestro is, at this time of his career, depicting accurately not only his many skills at 360 degrees, but also his constant and forward-moving growth as a musician and an avid connoisseur of the history and the tradition of the Great American Songbook of the last half a century.
Carpenter was offered the chance to work, on his new album, with one of the hottest names in the music industry right now, the producer, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Christoffer "Kid" Andersen and although the American Saxophonist and Singer/Songwriter had never worked together before, the artistic sparkle between the two artists did not take long to sparkle, since the early stages of the recording process.
When Andersen was told that Carpenter wanted to have his new album with a more accentuated Soul vibe to it, the producer took no time at all to assemble some of the finest musician of the current American Blues & R&B's establishment to accompany Carpenter in his new artistic venture and, soon enough, the sonic seeds of Carpenter's new record were starting to take the shape requested by the American Saxophonist in the first place.
Just Got Started, Jimmy Carpenter's brand-new body of work, it is undoubtedly one of the finest records that Bluebird Reviews had the privilege to come across in 2024, thanks, among many positive qualities about the album, also to that sense of musical freedom clearly palpable throughout the 12 tracks part of Carpenter's new record.
There is a reason on why our website feels that the artistic freedom felt on the record played a pivotal role in the making of Just Got Started; for a Saxophonist, an instrument that inspires its player to explore, within a tune, different sonic tangents, it must be so important to feel that there are no specific constraints to wrap a song within the canonical 4-4 and a half minutes, with the usual patterns involving verses-bridges-choruses, but there is instead the possibility to navigate through the tune without impositions and to integrate the aforementioned patterns with improvisational solo parts played by multiple instruments, allowing, in that way to dress and enrich a tune with more than one layer, which is exactly what happens within this very inspired record.
Jimmy Carpenter's new record has most definitely a strong Soul flavour about it, with the American artist showcasing his great love and respect for the Stax sound and the Philly Soul of the '60s and 70's on the rather splendid album's title-track, or on numbers such as Live Again and Allen Toussaint's cover of Night People, among other songs present on the album. But Just Got Started is much more than Soul, though. It's a place where also Blues, Fusion, Gospel, Funk and R&B find their place through Carpenter's renowned enormous swagger and versatility, supported rather wonderfully also by the splendid contribution brought, especially on guitar and particularly on the more Bluesy moments of the record, by Kid Andersen.
What also needs to be highlighted, on Just Got Started, it's the growth and maturity of Jimmy Carpenter's vocals; the fact that the American artist was able to deliver such strong performances especially on songs like the Gospel/Soul/R&B drenched Shining Star, I Only Gamble With My Heart and Willie Dixon's Bluesy cover of My Babe, among others, it says a lot about the level of musicianship reached by Carpenter not only as a master of the saxophone but also as a singer.
The whole album is a sonic feast, both for the listeners and for the artist himself. While Carpenter has got the opportunity, within the 4 originals and 8 covers included in the album, to record also two of the tunes of one of his most loved music heroes, King Curtis, through the splendid renditions of Midnight Blue and Soul Theme, any respectable music lover will love and admire by the same token the huge amount of work that is gone to assemble a record of the level of Just Got Started, where the history and the tradition of the American Music of the last century is here celebrated in a breathtakingly executed and highly harmonic kaleidoscope of music styles in which, at the peak of it all, stands the enormous artistry and musicianship of Jimmy Carpenter.
If Jimmy Carpenter feels that he Just Got Started, as he implies in the title of his new record, we can expect from him more scintillating records to come in the next decades. But for the time being, it is more than fair to say that the Saxophone Maestro has nailed one of the most inspired and well crafted albums of 2024.
Just Got Started is out now and it is available to be purchased via Jimmy Carpenter Official Website