[Adapted from a review originally appearing in On The Town magazine on February 18, 1997]<\/i><\/p>\n
Kevin Eubanks knows about life as a second banana. Ed McMahon may have been born for the role of Johnny Carson’s foil (and born damned lucky), but Branford Marsalis clearly detested assuming the McMahon\/Doc Severinsen role when Jay Leno took over The Tonight Show<\/i>. Eubanks, on the other hand, always seemed much more comfortable in the role during his 15-year run with Leno, and here may just be his secret\u2014like McMahon, Eubanks seems to be a low-key, affable guy without much in the way of ego-needs, and yet, like Marsalis, he is one hell of a musical talent.<\/p>\n
On Live at Bradley’s<\/i>, his eighth album, jazz-fusion guitarist Eubanks and fellow players James Williams (piano) and Robert Hurst (bass) breeze through a run of jazz classics and contemporaries for an appreciative New York crowd. The mood throughout is intimate and sophisticated\u2014this is letter-perfect late evening relaxation music. Which is not to say there aren’t shows of instrumental prowess\u2014Eubanks’ deft fretboard runs on the feverish “June In January” are a wonder, and his masterful solo treatment of Duke Ellington’s “In A Sentimental Mood” oozes confidence and class. It’s just that the tendency toward long jams (“Speak Low” and Williams’ “Alter Ego” both clock in at over 14 minutes; the album contains seven songs and runs over 70 minutes) makes the music flow like a river, pausing only long enough to round a bend into the next melody.<\/p>\n
Here, then, was Eubanks’ real secret\u2014Leno could pull all the dumb make-fun-of-the-foil gags he wanted, but Eubanks would still have performances like Bradley’s<\/i> to satisfy his musical jones, and enjoyed a nightly audience in the millions in the meantime. Smooth move, Kev.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":31857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[9353],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-43579","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-kevin-eubanks","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=43579"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=43579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}