Sabertooth

Not to be mistaken for either the Philadelphia alternative metal outfit or the Northern California hardcore ensemble that share similar names, this Chicago-based ensemble operates as a jazz-focused organ group. Drawing from the soul-jazz and hard bop organ trios and quartets that thrived across Philadelphia, Chicago, and the broader Midwest throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the Windy City unit took cues from gritty, funk-inflected players such as Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff, Richard "Groove" Holmes, and Jimmy McGriff, along with the robust, hard-charging tenor saxophonists who routinely joined them during that era—Gene Ammons, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Stanley Turrentine, and Willis "Gator" Jackson among them. At the same time, the four musicians have frequently stepped outside those idioms into post-bop and modal terrain, absorbing the influence of John Coltrane’s modal work from the early to middle 1960s as well as the innovations of Larry Young, the Hammond B-3 pioneer often described as “the John Coltrane of the Organ.” Consequently the group functions comfortably in both the post-bop and soul-jazz/hard bop realms while maintaining an unusually wide-ranging book that stretches from standard jazz material to rock songs associated with The Allman Brothers, Bob Dylan, and The Grateful Dead.

The band was formed in Chicago in 1990 by saxophonists Cameron Pfiffner, who doubles on soprano saxophone and flute, and Pat Mallinger, a St. Paul, Minnesota native who also handles alto saxophone and flute. The presence of two flutists has distinguished Sabertooth from most other organ combos, which have seldom spotlighted the instrument. Beginning in 1993 the quartet became a weekly fixture at the Green Mill, the historic Chicago jazz venue established in 1907 that began presenting live jazz in the 1920s; the group was engaged to perform the club’s “After Hours Jazz Party” every Saturday from midnight until 5 a.m., a residency that remained in place fifteen years later. Although personnel shifts occurred—most notably organist Dan Trudell’s tenure from 1994 to 2002—Pfiffner and Mallinger have remained the constant leaders. By 2007 the lineup featured Pfiffner and Mallinger alongside organist Pete Benson, who joined in 2002, and drummer Ted Sirota, whose own ensemble, Ted Sirota’s Rebel Souls, was founded in 1996 and has appeared on both the Naim label and Chicago’s Delmark Records. That same year Delmark issued Sabertooth’s Live at the Green Mill, an album distinct from the similarly titled, self-released recording the band issued in 2001 with Trudell at the organ.