Kevin Coelho: Turn It Up

Chasing a club vibe ... A record meant to have that dancing spirit, that groove-to-the-music, turn-it-up vibe. (Quote: Kevin Coelho)
Hans Koert

Kevin Coelho, a young adult, who surprised with his debut album Funkengrüven, entitled his latest album Turn Ut Up …... because the record was meant to have that dancing spirit from those early days, that Club vibe .... that groove-to—the-music, turn-it-up vibe. (Quote Kevin Coelho)  

The Hammond organ was extreme popular during the 1950s and 1960s due to Hammond players like Jimmy Smith, Brother Jack McDuff  Jimmy McGriff and Shirley Scott, but its history started in the 1930s, when Thomas Fats Waller discovered the instrument and first used it to record his famous radio transcriptions, the Lang-worth Recordings.  Maybe you've heard  Fats' “jamsession” story on Christmas Eve 1939, remembered by Franz Jackson in his autobiography ( Autobiography Of Black Jazz) when Fats played his portable Hammond organ in his hotel room …  literally rocking when it slowly began filling up with  piano players, like Duke Ellington, who was in the house too and Earl Hines who played next door at the Terrace ….  Fats recorded a few months earlier his famous Lang-Worth Recordings;  spiritual radio transcriptions, which would start to popularize the early Hammond sound ….

Kevin Coelho ( photo courtesy: Jeff Spirer)

When Kevin Coelho was born, August 1995,  Fats Waller was already history - a long-gone icon of the keys and Jimmy Smith had his second career revival playing and recording with a new generation of US Jazz musicians, the so-called Young Lions, like Roy Hargrove and Nicholas Payton. 

Kevin Coelho ( promo picture)

• Sixteen years young, Kevin Coelho debuted with his album Funkengrüven. The Keep (it) Swinging review from November 2012 learns how it all started. Kevin Coelho started to play the piano when he was six years old and when he was eleven years, he started to play the organ. Some of his teachers were well known jazz organ players like Tony Monaco, who remembers his first meeting with Kevin: A few years ago I got the lucky call from Kevin who was then just turning fourteen years old, wanting to study and take intense lessons with me. The day finally came and he arrived when I had a gig with my Powerhouse trio with Reggie Jackson and Derek DiCenzo.  Kevin sat there with a big smile and I felt so happy to see him feeling good. I was totally floored when he started playing. His vocabulary on the B3 was already very mature and his knowledge of the music I grew up listening to was well studied already. I knew that this young man had talent, confidence, and determination as we began our journey together as teacher and student.(source: Kevin Coelho: Funkengrüven) 

The line up of Kevi Coelho’s trio is equal to the trio of his debut album: Derek Dicenzo at the guitar and Reggie Jackson at the drums, although it’s rather weird that the names of these two members of the trio are hidden somewhere in the liner notes ……  

Kevin Coelho: Turn It Up ( CCP 7018)

Like Funkengruven, its second album Turn It Up contains ten tracks, eight in fact, all, but two, compositions by others, but its arrangements learn that Kevin Coelho developed  during this phase preparing his latest album ….. I’ve grown and grown up .. he explains. Making the first album, I was highly influenced by Tony Monaco, my teacher and aspirator.  But with this new album, I’m  more of my own man. I was freer with the instrument, freer to explore different aspects of it.   

The opening track Root Down honors Hammond legend Jimmy Smith, who recorded this tune as Root Down  And Get It in February 1972. It’s one of my favorites, including his own composition Zig Zag.  My most favorite is the great ballad Georgia On My Mind as played by Kevin Coelho on this album.

Enjoy Root Down as played at the San Jose Jazz Festival 2012 Summer Fest.



The album contains two bonus tracks with two of his songs edited for radio … They seem to be more funky and groovy then the regular versions.  Great stuff.

Hans Koert

editor
keepswinging@live.nl
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If you love that funky grooving sound of the 1960s Hammond B3 Organ, you should have an ear to Kevin Coelho's  music ..... Recently his second album was releaseed, entitled Turn It Up  - a record  that was meant to have that dancing spirit, that groove-to-the-music, turn-it-up vibe.

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