This Is Book's Music

With a title like Fluteus Maximus (self-released), it was cute but I almost stayed away from it for being, if not cute, then downright corny. But I gave it a shot and I’m glad I didn’t pass this up.

Mindy Canter plays the flute as her main instrument but she also goes between keyboards and the Hammond B-3, and along with her band, she gets a chance to truly tear it up with some fine playing and great selection of songs. To make it interesting, all of the songs were done in one take (thus the subtitle One Session: One Take), and then she’d dub her B-3 playing soon after. If she could split herself she’d probably play everything heard, but her playing is solid and you want to hear more. Along with originals, Canter handles versionf of “Watermelon Man”, “Mercy Mercy Mercy”, “Over The Rainbow”, “High Heel Sneakers”, and showing her love of the flute to the fullest, a nice rendition of Herbie Mann‘s classic “Memphis Underground”, taken here at a performance that’s under 5 1/2 minutes.

Occasionally I’m kinda iffy about vocals, but most of them on the album are done by guitarist Denny Geyer, whose bluesy ways help take the songs to deeper places and it’s a perfect match for the music that’s being played (the band are rounded out by Roy Blumefeld on drums and Paul Smith on bass).

So again: Fluteus Maximus may be a tacky choice for anything, but let’s not get elitist here. The title is a play on the glutes, thus playful, and the musicians here are playing to the maximum. The music can indeed move the glutes, your mileage may very, but when you have music well executed as it is here, the title is secondary.