Saturday Morning Records: #17 — Bob James’ “One”

A new series for paying subscribers — celebrating favourite albums for the weekend

Regular readers will know I’m something of a Bob James fan — and I pimp out Angela, his ‘Theme for Taxi’ whenever and wherever I can; that might be the single most important “sound of my childhood” song, or piece of music, that I can think of straight away, and carry in my head and in my heart.

But alongside that, and/or because of that, I’ve become a Bob James fanatic, or very nearly. I own most of his albums on vinyl — and love the chance to sit down with them, even the cheesier ones. To me there’s an astonishing musical mind at work, always, and an absolute purity — a vision. He knows what he’s trying to achieve, and nails it. There’s also a roll call of some of the best musicians from the 70s, 80s and 90s — players that can make an album all on their own (Steve Gadd, Idris Muhammad, Ralph MacDonald, Gary King…)

One is not the first Bob James solo album, it’s actually his third — but it kinda is The First. It’s the start of a new direction, and he followed up on this, essentially naming his following albums with variations on the number that corresponded (Two, Three, and then, oddly, BJ4). Anyway, One arrived after nearly a decade-long gap, his first two albums, straight jazz records made in the early 1960s.