For the life of me I have no idea why Charlie Shoemake isn't a household name. He's easily one of the finest jazz vibists around and yet he's largely unknown. He loves melody and harmony and, most of all, he swings. Maybe it's because he doesn't have a Wiki page or a website. Or because his last name looks like a letter is missing. Or because none of his albums are available as downloads. Who knows—lots of greats slip through the cracks. [Pictured above: Charlie Shoemake with drummer Dick Berk, c. late 1970s courtesy of Ted Greene]
Shoemake was born in Houston and began his recording career with George Shearing in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and recorded on the East Coast in the 1980s and in Hollywood in the years that followed. But rather than drag on with a bio, let me simply turn you on to a comprehensive one here.
Instead, let's talk music.
Here's Shoemake with the Bill Holman Big Band on Hank Mobley's This I Dig of You. It looks like the recording session for Shoemake's album Strollin', which would make it January 16, 1991...
And here's East of the Sun from a Shearing tribute...
Perhaps most frustrating of all is that Shoemake's many superb albums can't be sampled at sites like Amazon. I was, however, able to find a sideman date with Bruce Eskovitz on One for Newk (Koch Jazz) in 1993 here.
So let me give you a couple of tracks to give you a sense of how terrific Shoemake is. Here's Dunbar's Place from Cross Roads (1982) with Tom Harrell (tp,flhrn), Charlie Shoemake (vib), Tommy Flanagan (p), Peter Sprague (g), Ed Schuller (b) and Paul Motian (d)...
And here's Fleeting Resemblance from the same album...
