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In some ways, Royce Campbell's A Jazz Guitar Christmas picks up where Vince Guaraldi's Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown left off. Campbell's jazz trio (Royce Campbell, guitar, Tom Baldwin, bass, and Howard Curtis, drums) play in a style similar to the Vince Guaraldi Trio, a clipped, semi-sweet style popular during the '50s and '60s.

Where Guaraldi was playing primarily his own compositions, Campbell's trio fills in with several holiday standards. The arrangements of these tunes here is uniformly crisp and interesting, but I especially liked the wistful Toyland and Live Every Day like Christmas, which featured an exceedingly rare (for Jazz) male vocal part, sung by Everett Greene.

The string arrangements are credited to Carroll DeCamp, and are they ever groovy! For a traditional jazz ensemble--especially a trio--the trick is to bring warmth and character to an inherently cool and minimalistic form. It is particularly important for jazz music that the arrangements make this possible. And in this case they evidently do, because I felt much more emotional warmth than I typically do for this style of music.

For initiates of the cool jazz and fans of the Vince Guaraldi Trio, Royce Campbell's A Jazz Guitar Christmas is worth a listen.

--Richard Banks
(Reviewed in 2004)

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Line-up:

Royce Campbell, guitar
Tom Baldwin, bass
Howard Curtis, drums

Royce Campbell

A Jazz Guitar Christmas

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Track List