JAZZBO NOTES HIGHLY RECOMMENDED RECORDING

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I consider Decoy to be the best date Davis recorded after his temporary “retirement” in the 70s due to illness, basically because of the performance of the musicians.

This time around, he’s got a killer band behind him: John Scofield on guitar, Darryl Jones on bass, Al Foster on drums, Bill Evans or Branford Marsalis on saxophones, and Mino Cinelu on percussion. Only Robert Irving III on synthesizer doesn’t fit in this august company. Mostly Irving provides washes of harmony on the keyboards, which are okay, I guess. The good news is that they don’t really get in the way.

Check out the opener Decoy. The tune isn’t much, but the performance! The band shreds the material. The rhythm section is seriously funky. Davis is in fine form on trumpet, playing his trademark out lines that never quite land on the tonic. Scofield is just blistering in his solo. Branford Marsalis plays snaky sinouous lines that wind around the tune like a python on speed.

Robot 415 is kind of an experiment, to see how one of Davis’ patented twisty melodies would play out over an almost insultingly simple funk vamp. It’s sort of interesting and doesn’t overstay it’s welcome since it’s less than a minute long.

Code M.D. is another funk tune without a lot of intrinsic interest, but the band plays the hell out of it, with the exception of Robert Irving III, whose keyboard textures weren’t exactly riveting at the time, and now definitely date the material.

Are you beginning to catch my drift? Decoy is all about the band and the musicianship, not the tunes per se.

Freaky Deaky is similarly weak as a composition, and doesn’t even benefit from the performance of the full band. That’s okay. It’s not painful or anything.

Things get more interesting with What It Is, co-written by Scofield and Davis. It starts out with a crunchy bass riff from Darryl Jones before the spikey theme enters courtesy of Scofield’s guitar. Davis spends much of his time laying on synth textures while Bill Evans wails on soprano sax. For Davis’ solo, he decides to duel with himself via overdub. He alternates between gnomic, lazy-sounding statements and scalar flurries that trail off into nothingness.

The tune segues right into That’s Right, also written by Scofield and Davis. It’s a slow funk vamp, really, but played with a blues feel. Davis solos for a couple of minutes before the melody even shows up, played by Scofield and Branford Marsalis on soprano sax. The blues connection gets more explicit with Scofield’s solo.

The date closes with the fierce That’s What Happened. It features a really obnoxious rock ‘n roll riff incorporated into the melody on top of Darryl Jones’ brutal funk groove. Whatever you feel about the arrangement of That’s What Happened, it sure isn’t boring.

Looking back on it, I’ve got to admit that the compositions on Decoy aren’t exactly on the level on the ones Davis was playing back in the late 60s, but then again, Davis’ career since then has mostly been about discovering the material in the performances, and on that level, I consider Decoy a major success.

And besides, the purpose of these tunes is to provide a rhythmic foil for the soloists. When you consider some of the wretched tunes and arrangements on some of Davis’ other albums from his late period, the compositions on Decoy do their job just fine, thank you very much.

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