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Guitarist John Tropea and friends keep the jazz-funk flame burning

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For about a decade from the early 1970s to the early '80s, an elite coterie of session musicians - who were also gifted improvisers - were kept almost permanently busy in the studios of New York and Los Angeles adding jazzy sophistication to some of the biggest pop hits of the era.

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As well as performing for singers who wanted the groove only those players could provide, they made their own instrumental albums. It was the heyday of jazz-funk.

Times have changed, but some of those musicians have kept the flame burning: some of the top New York names can be heard on , the latest album from guitarist John Tropea.

Tropea and fellow guitarist Eric Gale (who died in 1994) were the east coast counterparts to Lee Ritenour and Larry Carlton in the west. Among those who got a call from Tropea were Steve Gadd on drums, the Blues Brothers Band saxophonist Lou Marini, trumpeters Lew Soloff and Randy Brecker, two of the Brecker Brothers Band's former bassists, Neil Jason and Will Lee, and long-serving Saturday Night Live Band keyboardist Leon Pendarvis.

Soloff, whose many credits included Blood, Sweat & Tears and the Gil Evans Orchestra, died in March this year.

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John Tropea
John Tropea
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