Posted on Wed, Mar. 15, 2006

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Jazz sideman Simpson gets his dream job, goes solo

By AL HUNTER JR.

huntera@phillynews.com 215-854-5855

Don't get Brian Simpson wrong. His years as a sideman to the likes of Dave Koz, Janet Jackson, Stanley Clarke, Rachelle Ferrell, Billy Cobham, Teena Marie and George Duke have been very good to him.

He's been able to raise three kids, buy a house, enjoy a comfortable lifestyle.

But the keyboardist wanted more. He wanted to be a solo artist.

"My dream was for people to hear my music," said Simpson, whose single, "It's All Good" is one of top songs played on WJJZ- FM. His CD of the same title is in heavy rotation around the country.

Simpson and saxophonist Kirk Whalum will perform an "in-store" concert tomorrow at Center City's Borders bookstore. "Kirk Whalum Performs the Babyface Songbook" was released last year.

Simpson, 44, is Koz's musical director. Koz also runs the Rendezvous label, which released Simpson's disc. The saxophonist plays on the title cut.

It's instrumental pop music ("smooth jazz"), but Simpson takes moments to stretch out and does more than pound out one-finger melodies. "Smooth jazz" often makes lead instrumentalists - whether on saxophone, guitar or keyboard - sound generic. He wants to avoid that.

"It's absolutely necessary to break out of it," Simpson said. "I bet you can tell when it's Joe Sample playing." Sample's 1990 record, "Ashes to Ashes," is a favorite.

"That's the high mark I'm shooting for, a record you can play 20 years from now, and the fact he has a voice," Simpson said, adding that, next to the xylophone, the piano is the most difficult instrument on which to create a musician's "voice."

"I think on my single, I jumped out of that box. That showed it [an improvisational solo] can be accepted," he said. "I tried to make it a real journey. I never feel like I'm holding back. I hear songs where improvisation is basically nil. You will hear some sort of bebop lick out of me. It's hard for me to hold that back."

The album's last cut, "Au Contraire," is a mid-tempo, straight-ahead jazz piece, with Simpson in an acoustic quartet setting.

This isn't his first solo record. In 1995, after touring with Janet Jackson, Simpson released "Closer Still" on Noteworthy, a small indie label. It got airplay and positive reviews, but the label lacked marketing muscle, he said.

Rendezvous is small, too, but knows its niche. And it doesn't hurt to have Koz, one of the genre's enduring stars, at the helm. "Every person is devoted to smooth jazz," Simpson said of the staff. "They're determined to make it work and have to make it work creatively. These are challenging times, particularly for jazz. Smooth jazz is it for them."

So will he go back to being strictly a sideman? "No way," said Simpson, a Los Angeles transplant originally from the Chicago area. He's collecting songs and song ideas for his next project.

"I feel a little pressure now that the [first] record did so well," he said.

Pressure? Sure enough, Brian Simpson is getting his taste of the limelight.