Rose Bar at New York's Gramercy Park Hotel is a large, high-ceilinged room with a fireplace, a pool table, and a back bar. On most evenings there is a DJ but, on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8 to 10 PM, something very special happens -- an appearance by crooner-trumpeter Brian Newman, who has held this twice-a-week residency there since Fall of 2011. For music fans looking for some hard-swinging, straight-ahead jazz, this has good time written all over it. Although Rose Bar is, technically, a hotel lounge, Newman and his band are no mere "lounge" group -- this is a first-rate, driving hard-bop jazz group comprised of Newman, tenor saxophonist Steve Kortyka, pianist-organist Alex Smith,and drummer Paul Francis, all in their mid-30s and from Ohio, and they wail. Their repertoire is drawn primarily from The Great American Songbook, with an occasional jazz version of a rock, cabaret, or Latin tune, or original by a band member ("Uncle Tone," an Alex Smith composition heard here, serves as the band's theme). A patron will hear memorable, melodic tunes by Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Jimmy Van Heusen, Rodgers and Hart, Harry Warren, and other leading songwriters of all time. Compared with many bands that recycle the same 20 or 25 tunes year after year, Newman's group has a large repertoire of more than 200 numbers. Newman's quartet is a happy band that makes its presence felt. Newman and Kortyka are both 6-foot-4, and sometimes Kortyka, in the middle of a solo, will walk out into the audience playing, into the adjoining bar and back, like Big Jay McNeely, Red Prysock and other tenor showmen who walked the rooms of the chitlin clubs of the 1940s and 1950s. As bandleader and host Newman is genial and upbeat, with droll observations and compliments to his sidemen. Visitors drift in from the hotel lobby to pack the room and are always rewarded, like jazz fans who have caught the group in recent years at The Rainbow Room and The Oak Room at The Plaza Hotel and Iridium in New York and across the US and elsewhere. Every so often there are excellent guest performers such as Jose Feliciano and even Lady Gaga, a close friend. Newman is a powerful trumpeter, much influenced in his youth by Miles Davis and by Chet Baker (for both ballad-playing and vocals) and after that by the exuberant Dizzy Gillespie and Freddie Hubbard. On this album he makes it clear that he can do anything he wants on the horn -- he digs in as a high-energy, high-note wailer on "Get Happy," plays straight be-bop on "New York Tune," sounds stylish and hip on "It's Alright," rips off some inspired double-time passages on "Moonglow," and plays the blues on "Eyes on the City," but he can also play ballads with touching sensitivity, as his solo on Duke Ellington's 1934 classic "Solitude" (which Ellington always claimed he wrote in twenty minutes) demonstrates. As a vocalist, Newman follows in the footsteps of the modern masters -- Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, and Sammy Davis, Jr. He doesn't fancy himself a soul singer or rhythm-and-blues vocalist -- there are no down-home, Howlin' Wolf-inspired blues about mean, mistreating women or gambling, although in club appearances he does occasionally sing Doris Tauber's 1962 torch song "Drinking Again," with Johnny Mercer's ironic lyrics. Newman grew up in Cleveland, where he became interested in jazz as a child, started on trumpet at age 10, and played his first gig at 12. The idea for the band came about when Newman, Smith, and Kortyka got to know each other at The Cincinnati Conservatory in the late 1990s and, as Newman says, "Paul and Alex have been with me since 1999 and we've been here in New York since 2003." Their approach to jazz is never "arty" or elitist, but straightforward, melodic, and swinging. "I like to play some good music and make it accessible and entertaining to everyone, to make people have a good time, see them enjoy themselves. I don't think I'd consider myself an 'artist'." This new record, "Eyes on the City," is very much like paying a visit to see Brian Newman at Rose Bar or any of the other venues he plays, something of a guided tour through his musical sensibilities. As always, he sings and swings hard and, like Sinatra and his other vocal inspirations, has an intuitive sense of the power of a lyric, how it reaches out to the listener. "And then sometimes I'm drawn to the sadness of lyrics," he says, "the way they tell a story." The quartet is noteworthy for the way Newman sets an upbeat mood, and for the way his sidemen back him with such style and enthusiasm, with the attitude of pals supporting pals. And the others are themselves inventive soloists. Kortyka, something of a hybrid stylistically, was first inspired by alto saxophone master Charlie Parker, whose influence is still there in his solo lines along with touches of Joe Henderson and Lester Young. The rhythm section, augmented here by former band member Scott Ritchie on acoustic bass for those numbers on which Smith plays piano, is tight and disciplined. Smith, on piano, claims a Bill Evans influence but, on uptempo numbers, shows traces of Cedar Walton and Harold Mabern in his solo lines, such as his sparkling gem on "It's Alright" and other beauties on "Get Happy" and "You're Not My Baby." On organ, as on "Take Me Back to Brooklyn" and "Uncle Tone," his taste runs more to the be-bop phrasing of Don Patterson and Jimmy Smith rather than the heavier blues-playing of Jimmy McGriff and Jack McDuff. Drummer Paul Francis first listened to John Von Ohlen, who played drums in the big bands of Woody Herman in the late 1960s and Stan Kenton in the early 1970s and who since 1980 has led The Blue Wisp Big Band in Cincinnati. Francis' big-band orientation, crisp, propulsive timekeeping, and timely fills and solo breaks are key to the Newman band's tight ensemble sound. Three of the tunes here -- "It's Alright," "You're Not My lady," and title song "Eyes on the City" -- were written by Newman's friend Tommy London, lead singer of The Dirty Pearls, and showcase London's talent for intricate, literate lyrics, although Newman wrote the introduction to the jaunty "It's Alright," whose witty story recalls the best of Gershwin and Cole Porter in their evocation of a mood and lifestyle. The Harold Arlen standard, "Get Happy," was introduced in 1930 by singer Ruth Etting, later became associated with Judy Garland, and here is a racy instrumental rouser that leads off the album as Newman and the band often open with it in club appearances. Victor Young's 1932 composition, "Street of Dreams," was originally more of a ballad feature for singers but here is presented in a medium-tempo arrangement with solos by Kortyka and Newman following the leader's vocal. "Eyes on the City" is a funky theme with Alex Smith heard on organ, a Newman vocal, and a soulful tenor solo setting off Newman's own bluesy trumpet statement. "New York Tune" is a classic be-bop instrumental with Newman and Kortyka playing the main line. Willie Nelson's 1960 composition, "Night Life," was turned down, when Nelson first tried to record it that year, as "not country enough" and Nelson, short of money, sold the rights to fellow country singer Ray Price, who made it into a hit. Here it is a blues-ballad vocal by Newman with an arrangement reminiscent of many of the features from the band Ray Charles led from 1958-1963 that showcased saxophonist David "Fathead" Newman. Kortyka, in his preaching solo and background lines, comes close to sounding like "Fathead" himself, and Smith is heard again on organ. The rendition of "Moonglow" here does not much resemble the dreamy number written by Eddie DeLange in 1934 -- re-worked by Steve Allen to become "Theme From Picnic" for the 1955 movie with William Holden and Kim Novak -- but has been updated into a stomping funk feature popular with audiences at the band's shows. And the edgy "Take Me Back to Brooklyn" is a tribute of sorts to Newman's own New York neighborhood. This recording, good as it is, is not simply a collection of tunes that makes the listener tap a foot and feel good. It is certainly all that, but it also deserves close attention for what it reveals about Brian Newman as singer, musician, bandleader, and human being. He may not think of himself as an "artist" in the elitist sense of the word but, still only 35, he is unquestionably a superior performer who puts to shame many of the self-consciously "artistic" members of the jazz community in every note he plays on trumpet and every word he sings. The serious fan of jazz and popular music should listen very carefully to this record, and then head out to Rose Bar or The Rainbow Room or Iridium to hear Brian Newman and his band live, and they will see that, from the downbeat and opening notes of "Get Happy' or whatever the band is playing that evening as an opener, they wail. Tony Outhwaite August 2016