James Morton Groove Den interview: ‘A journey through groove’

The Ribble Valley June Jazz Weekend begins tomorrow night with a performance from The Swing Commanders & Maisie Riley before the likes of Veronneau, the Olive Cuttill Quintet, the Jack Yerkess Quartet and the Vernon Gallery Big Band grace the stage on Saturday. The weekend will come to a close with a set from James Morton’s Groove Den, who will be performing alongside trombone virtuoso Dennis Rollins.

Morton has performed with Rollins in many different contexts for the last ten years. In the early days of their professional relationship, Rollins and Morton formed a formidable horn section for Pee Wee Ellis’ band, performing in Blue Note Clubs in Beijing and Shanghai, China. Since then, Morton has featured in Rollins’ Funky Funk project and vice versa.

“I've got an amazing amount of admiration for Dennis,” Morton admitted when speaking on the phone this afternoon. “He's a bit older than me, so I do look up to him. And really, what's amazing is that, you know, the lineage we've both had playing with JB's horns, Dennis with Maceo Parker and myself with Pee Wee Ellis and Fred Wesley.

“We really feel and understand that, you know, those guys... Well, Pee Wee's no longer with us. Maceo's not playing so much anymore. And, you know, they're in their 80s now, these guys. So it's up to us to kind of carry the torch. And we had direct mentorship and all that kind of stuff from the original guys. We very much feel like we're carrying the torch forward,” Morton finished.

Like Rollins, Morton is a veteran of music himself. The saxophonist learned how to play the saxophone at the tender age of nine years old before launching his musical career soon after, performing his first-ever show at 12 years old. The rest? Well, the rest is history, shall we say. “My mum used to take me down to sort of jazz workshops in Bristol when I was 12 or 13. And then quite quickly, I was performing in, in sort of jazz funk bands, I suppose, based in Bristol,” Morton remembered.

In the early stages of his career, Morton recalled playing in bars, clubs and busking on the streets of Bristol, but there’s one early performing experience that stands out unlike any other. In the lead-up to his 16th birthday, the saxophonist graced the Jazz/World Music stage at Glastonbury Festival – an opportunity that came before he’d even acquired his GCSE results.

“The GCSEs came back alright, but I'm not sure how much I really cared about them at that point,” Morton said with a laugh. “I think I was more excited about playing at Glastonbury. But yeah, that was all; that all came out of my mum and dad taking me to jazz workshops and little gigs, and I couldn't have done it without them supporting me and driving me around and being slightly liberal, I suppose, leaving their underage son in places of ill repute. But it seemed to have worked out alright, anyway,” he joked.

The decision to pursue music has certainly paid dividends for Morton, who has gone on to record and perform with a number of musical heavyweights. The saxophonist featured on Pendulum’s platinum-selling Drum’n'Bass album ‘Hold Your Colour’ and performed with the likes of Fred Wesley and The New JB's, Tony Allen, Angelique Kidjo, Carleen Anderson and Kasabian, thanks to his relationship with the band’s drummer Ian Matthews, who featured in James Morton’s Porkchop – the saxophone-fronted Hammond organ quartet, which released the critically acclaimed ‘Don’t You Worry ‘Bout That’ in 2010.

However, it was in 2022 when Morton decided to form Groove Den – a project involving guitarist Alex Hutchings, who has over 100,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel; organist Anders Olinder, who has performed with Deep Purple’s Glenn Hughes and Pee Wee Ellis; and Incognito drummer Francesco Mendolia. Morton believes the band’s style of music gives a lot of opportunity for each member to show their musicianship.

“We really work within a framework where there are songs that are like a skeletal structure and there is a lot of improvisation around this structure. The improvisation kind of hangs off as decoration around the structures of the songs. So there are written parts, but there's also a lot of room for the musicians to flex their musicianship and interact with each other. There is a bit of comedy. We do laugh on stage quite a lot because people in the band are so expressive. I do intentionally give all of the musicians in the group space to express themselves without constraint,” Morton stated.

In the years since, the project has gone from strength to strength. The four-piece played a sold-out show in Paris, France, earlier this year and have plans to go further afield into Asia next year. However, with a sound that draws on an array of musical styles, ranging from jazz, funk, hip-hop, soul and rock music, what makes a live show from the Groove Den special?

“We aim to take people on a bit of a journey from different styles of groove, not just through the decades, but through different geographical places as well. So we start off with the blues, where it all began. We moved to New Orleans for a bit. We moved through the decades. There are some Bristol dub and trip-hop-inspired grooves. There's some straight-up funk. There are some gospel influences from Memphis. So, you know, we really kind of travel around a bit, and I try and showcase and demonstrate different grooves and feels, not only from different decades but from different places geographically, which kind of makes up the tapestry of all the music which I love to listen to and I love to play.

“A lot of musicians like my band because basically I'm taking all the best bits from the different kinds of sub-genres and kind of stitching them together. It's one big collage. There's a bit of something for everyone. I mean, I touch on rock and hip hop. There's some straight-up New Orleans dance stuff. There's blues. There's a soul. There's a Motown track.

“We really do jump around a bit. But the common DNA thread, I don't think anything sounds out of place the way that it's presented because there is a common thread of DNA that runs through all these different genres and sub-genres of music, which is based in blues and soul and groove and feel and improvisation. So nothing seems out of place or alien, and hopefully we tell a bit of a story throughout the set of how the music developed,” Morton stated.