The Honorable Hustlers

CLAIRE DALY - BARITONE SAX

What Critic's Have Been Saying...
***** DOWNBEAT MAGAZINE CRITIC'S POLL '02 and '03*****
Winner, "Talent Deserving Wider Recognition"

"...She is definatly the baritone saxophone talent to watch."
Paul DeBarros/Downbeat

"...A supple tone and a strong command of the horn and the modern mainstream"
Neil Tesser/Jazziz

"...She can combine bebop phrasing with a big barking R&B tone...Jazz could use more like her."
Kevin Whitehead/ Chicago Reader

"...Daly is clearly one of the most talented baritone saxophonists to come along in some years..."
Jack Bowers/ All About Jazz

"...She is the most lyrical baritonist performing, and that is no small feat. Movin' On is a really superb recording from the ground up."
C. Michael Bailey/Allaboutjazz.com

"...Movin' On, while addressing loss, more importantly emphasizes the rejuvenating omnipresence of life."
Don Williamson/Jazzreview.com

"...remarkable sound, clear and sweet and filled w/ harmonic devices. Claire Daly ranks among the best of today's contemporary baritone saxophone players."
Lee Prosser -online


WHAT CRITIC'S HAVE SAID ABOUT "The Claire Daly Quartet" and "Swing Low"...
Downbeat Critics Poll '99 - '01 - " Talent Deserving Wider Recognition"

"Daly has a capacious sound, drenched in soul & emotion without sentimental bathos, every note at the service of the song." Ted Panken - Downbeat Magazine

"...our most gifted mainstream baritone saxophonist...a prize player hidden in plain sight"
SteveFutterman - The New Yorker

"...a series of fresh interpretations. Her tone is sure, her phrasing gracefull..."
Mike Joyce - The Washington Post

"An equipose of emotional depth is reached...Daly revels in the baritone sax's warm tones."
Nate Guidry - Jazztimes Magazine

"It is, in fact, a bold yet subtle statement." (re: swing low)
Steve Graybow - Billboard Magazine

"Daly's prodigious technique and abundant imagination are coupled with a wildly nutty sense of humor ... the touch of a master player."
Tim Price - Saxophone Journal

"She stresses tone and texture over speed and thrust."
Jazziz Magazine review

"Daly has a gorgeous sound, and always swings -low or high...a debut that is long overdue"
Jack Bowers - www.allaboutjazz.com

"The excellent bebop oriented jazz set helps point out the fact that Daly is one of the top baritone saxophonists around."
Scott Yanow - L.A. Jazz Scene

"An adventurous small group date that establishes her as one of the top players on her ungainly instrument."
Ken Dreyden - Chattanooga Times

"In this last decade, one would be hard pressed to find a more meaningful, enjoyable date than the one Daly has just given the jazz world."
Michael G. Nastos - Ann Arbor Press

"A prodigiously gifted baritone saxist who is apparently comfortable in just about every area of jazz... Sureness and a strength of invention that is staggering..."
Johnny Adams - Monterey County Post

"Her expertise on the baritone sax is truley remarkable...this is one of the best baritone saxophone performances of the 1990's..."
Lee Prosser - www.jazzataglance

"A bright new star in a small constellation. * * * * "
Les Line - 52nd Street jazz.com

"She suavely handles the ungainly giant of the saxophone family.
Jay Harvey - Indianapolis Star

"A tune player and improviser in the truest sense."
Saratogian - review - various

The challenge of the title tagged across Is What?!’s album cover is only the start of the provocation offered by this trio of hip hop jazzers. Though even before you start figuring out their melange vibe, the question that arises is: who are these dudes? Fronted by MC Napoleon Maddox, Is What?! is completed by Matt Anderson on upright bass and Jack Walker on the sax and flute. They’ve come straight out of Cincinnati, not known as a hotbed of hip hop, but creativity flourishes in strange places.

The album opens with the appropriately enigmatic ?! Interlude that flings you crash bang into the eclectic trio’s style. MC Napoleon human beat boxing is layered over turntable dynamics and African-style chanting, which is reminiscent of the opening of Wyclef’s Year of the Dragon. It’s enough to enchant as the sonic feast moves on to Parachutes, a lyrical lecture on the subject of misogyny. Or as Napoleon puts it a “Public service announcement for all my dawgs / Living like dogs / Acting like dogs”. Lyrically, Is What?! are firmly on the backpack shelf. Try this on for size: “Calling women chickenheads / Telling them to open their legs / Boy you need to open your head / What would you do if your mom never had you?”

When rhyming, Napoleon’s flow is easy and his voice seems to wedge naturally between the powerfully aggressive bass, the soaring flute and the truly hypnotic sax of Jack Walker, who has got to be one of the oldest dudes to be in a hip hop band. Napoleon’s beatboxing skills, which have won the praise of the beatboxing meister himself, The Roots’ Rahzel, work seamlessly with the turntablism and mean drumming courtesy of guest Hamid Drake on tracks such as Concussion and Can’t Get In.

The sound of You Figure it Out defies easy labelling. The trio bear all the signs of hip hop – the MCing, scratch tricks and deft production – but the jazz impulse is everywhere. The most obvious nod to these roots is in their reworking of Charles Mingus’s Fables of Faubus, where they update Mingus’s civil rights era lament with Napoleon’s beat boxing wizardry. Is What?! also breathe their own style into Mingus' seminal Haitian Fight Song on a track called Trust. Such innovation runs through the entire album. Individual musical abilities are showcased and fused differently on each track. Each sound and style is riffed into many different possibilities. In doing so, Is What?! touch the very essence that informs hip hop as a genre.
 - Know the Ledge