Say It Plain is the debut recording of Scotty Barnhart, featured trumpet soloist with The Count Basie Orchestra for 17 years. He has assembled an incredible lineup of musicians including Wynton Marsalis and Clark Terry to perform his arrangements of six originals and six standards. The music contains a variety of styles from early jazz to straight ahead 4/4 swing, ballads, blues, medium Latin grooves, and up tempo burners that will satisfy any listener regardless of particular taste.

From his radically new arrangement of John Coltrane's "Giant Steps," complete with whistle and it's danceable New Orleans groove, to a duet with Wynton Marsalis on Dizzy Gillespie's Latin standard "Con Alma," to the rocking church feel of the title track complete with tambourine, to the bluesy and humorous vocals of jazz legend Clark Terry on the soon to be classic "Pay Me My Money," to the elegant and tasteful piano of Ellis Marsalis, Scotty Barnhart, as described by Stanley Crouch in the liner notes, "possesses one of the loveliest trumpet tones I've ever heard, can be playful, a deep thinker, virtuosic, adventurous, and a down home summoner of the sort of soul from which jazz comes. This recording is well thought out and superbly executed."



Free download: "Pay Me My Money" feat. Clark Terry (right-click, save as)