Walter Smith III - three of us are from Houston and Reuben is not

Saxophonist Walter Smith III pays homage to his hometown of Houston, Texas on his sophomore Blue Note album, 'three of us are from Houston and Reuben is not', which marks the follow-up to Smith’s acclaimed 2023 label debut 'return to casual'. The new album’s wry title signifies the lineup, which includes fellow Houston natives – pianist Jason Moran and drummer Eric Harland – while bassist Reuben Rogers, who hails from the Virgin Islands, rounds out the quartet. Together they enliven 10 compelling Smith originals and an imaginative rendering of a Sam Rivers composition – all of which speaks to Smith’s ascending status as one of modern jazz’s most engaging talents of his generation.

The inspiration for the album’s lead single “Cézanne,” a beguiling piece with a slippery yet swinging rhythmic pulse, is not the French Post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne. It is instead a tribute to Cézanne, a once popular jazz club in Houston. “When I was in high school in the late-’90s, Cézanne was the spot where you could hear great music and it wasn’t background music; Cézanne was a listening room,” Smith says. “It was our Village Vanguard.”

Smith explains that when he assembled the new quartet for the album, he noticed that three of the members were from Houston. “And Reuben is not,” he says with a laugh. “That informed the inspirations behind the compositions. At the end of the recording sessions, I was trying to come up with a name for the album and almost all my ideas were uninspired. But then I went to the first page of my album notes and said, ‘That’s it: three of us are from Houston and Reuben is not.’ It outlined the theme and personality of the band correctly.”

Moran and Harland are slightly older than Smith, yet they all attended Houston’s famed Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, a hotbed of young jazz talent where Smith and his classmates admired alumni who graduated before them and led world-renowned careers. With three of us are from Houston and Reuben is not, Smith hopes to bring attention to the wider music world that Houston already had and continues to be a major U.S. cultural hub. “Texas isn’t only oil, guns, and politics,” Smith says. “There’s a thriving culturally rich community, which many people don’t think of when they picture Texas.”