Joey Morant – Forever Sanctified
(BluJazz BJ3468. CD Review by Peter Vacher)

Originally from Charleston, Joey Morant is now a New York-based veteran trumpeter who seems to have worked with everyone from Count Basie to Tina Turner, via Lionel Hampton and Paul McCartney, all this without leaving a trace. At least on record.

I heard him a few years back with the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band, where his bravura style almost overwhelmed the other more staid old-timers who make up the band. He calls himself ‘Mr. Entertainer’ and has travelled the world according to his resumé and has won all sorts of awards in his community. In other words, he is a classic example of the US jazz musician who just carries on, building a career and holding their own, without the benefit of extensive press coverage or widely promoted recordings. A Mid-West reviewer called Morant, "One of the heaviest cats you never heard of." Exactly.

In two recent releases, trumpeters from different generations offer radically contrasting approaches to jazz. Joey Morant is a few decades older than 36-year-old Ambrose Akinmusire, so he honed his art in the years when jazz, R&B and soul were prominent in pop music. Ambrose came of age in the 21st century, with rap and hip-hop dominating pop music culture. Joey belongs to a long tradition of jazz musicians—specifically trumpeters—as entertainers, and like his forebearers Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie and Clark Terry, he sings as well as plays. Ambrose has a different agenda: He is a musical agent provocateur, an activist with a barely disguised Black Lives Matter subtext.