"Local Musicians Retell a Legend" Indianapolis Star - November 23, 2002 by Jay Harvey The legend of the Blue Note label in the days before it was revived under a protective, perhaps smothering, conglomerate was told in sound at the Jazz Kitchen Friday night. A quintet of local musicians headed by guitarist Bill Lancton focused on the era from 1955 to 1962, when founds Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff and a persnickety recording engineer named Rudy Van Gelder gave lots of creative room to the best jazz musicians, as well as respectful packaging and promotion. Lancton evoked the best of Grant Green and Kenny Burrell, two of the three notable Midwestern guitarists (the other being none other than Indianapolis' Wes Montgomery) who built most wisely on the foundation laid down around 1940 by the short-lived Charlie Christian. Lancton was joined on the bandstand -- set up unusually in the center of the room -- by tenor saxophonist Rob Dixon, pianist Steven Jones, bassist Fred Withrow and drummer Kenny Phelps. The quintet had a successful debut with the material on Labor Day weekend, and it seemed to Jazz Kitchen owner David Allee a good idea to bring the re-creation back on an evening less likely to be cluttered with other activities. Though the center position seemed to affect adversely the audience's concentration on the music, as well as distributing the band's sound unevenly, the first set came off as a stirring reminder that not every jazz tribute has to be an exercise in heavy nostalgia. The Blue Note sound and repertoire always had a loose, spur-of-the-moment immediacy. Luckily that means that when the skill and spirit of musicians revisiting the music are top-notch, any excessive reverence is easily swept away. "Lyresto," for instance, found Dixon evoking John Coltrane's phenomenal freedom over the range of his horn and something of that giant's intricate, but natural-sounding, phrasing. And right off the bat, Lancton's melody-driven solo in Green's "Miss Ann's Tempo" demonstrated that a distinctive style can be affectionately inhabited without narrow mimicry. "Blue Train," which bulks quite large in retrospective estimates of the pre-revolutionary Coltrane, actually represents the rather tenuous link Coltrane had with Blue Note. But the tune also symbolizes the straightforward, rootsy appeal of Coltrane the composer, and Lancton in particular was able to find a smooth balance of virtuosity and soulfulness in his solo. A pleasing "ringer" was Lancton's own "Boy's Night Out," a fast-paced boppish theme with a fetching bridge that goes out on a few harmonic limbs. Phelps kicked up a storm behind Dixon's solo, and Jones showed an imaginative feeling for the tune's harmony in his solo. Apart from a few moments of blurred ensemble and several solos that ran out of ideas before they ended, this was a powerfully felt trip into the modern-jazz past.