Taking It to Another Level

URI music professor Emmett Goods’ debut album is a musical self‑portrait.

The jazz soundtrack of Emmett Goods’ childhood inspired him to become a musician.

“I was always around music,” says Goods, associate professor of music and head of the jazz studies program at URI. “I guess the spark that went off and made me want to play, it had to be somewhere when I was a kid.”

His grandfather, J.C. Moses, was a renowned jazz drummer who recorded and performed with the likes of Ben Webster, Dexter Gordon, Kenny Dorham, Jackie McLean, and brothers Stanley and Tommy Turrentine. And while Moses died the year before Goods was born, he left a deep musical legacy.

“We literally just missed each other,” says Goods. “But he was a big presence in my life. My mom was still connected to all these people that were a part of his life in music.”

His mother, Regina, took him to countless concerts to see musical legends, such as Betty Carter and Sonny Rollins. His hometown, Pittsburgh, was home to many jazz greats and was a way station between New York and Chicago for scores more.

“I guess the spark that went off and made me want to play, it had to be somewhere when I was a kid.”

­—Emmett Goods

Goods documented his journey, in and out of music, on his debut solo album, Another Level, released in 2023 by Truth Revolution Records, the Grammy-nominated label run by former URI faculty member Zaccai Curtis. Goods wrote seven of the nine tracks on the album, which serves as a musical self-portrait. His older brother, Richie Goods, produced the album, played bass, and wrote the track “Goods Brothers.”

The tracks include “October Tune,” in honor of his mother; “Sweet Dreams,” a tribute to his late wife; and “West Indian Queen,” which celebrates his current wife. For his grandmother, there’s “Triedstone,” named for the little church that his grandmother “dragged us to whether we wanted to go to or not.”

The album opens with “Bennett St. Blues,” recalling the street where he was born and paying homage to the Pittsburgh High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, where he learned to play drums under legendary drummer Roger Humphries.

“I was not his greatest drum student,” says Goods. “So, I switched to trombone, and the rest is history.”

Along with the Goods brothers, the band includes three URI music faculty members—Haneef Nelson (trumpet/flugelhorn), who wrote “Blues for the Enslaved,” Andrew Wilcox (piano), and Atla DeChamplain (vocals). Rounding out the lineup are Nathan Edwards (tenor saxophone), Mark Whitfield Jr. (drums), and Shedrick Mitchell (organ). The album was recorded in the URI Fine Arts Center Concert Hall and engineered by URI’s Ethan Hicks.

The album has received good reviews and a lot of radio airtime, especially SiriusXM’s Real Jazz. “It means a lot that they’ve been willing to play it on Real Jazz,” Goods says.

Being a working musician gives Goods credibility as a professor and as director of URI’s Big Band. “I’m not just up here preaching,” he says.

At the same time, Goods has been fine-tuning URI’s jazz studies program, adding courses in jazz arrangement, piano, and theory and improvisation. The goal is to ensure students have the tools to deal with a shifting music landscape, which includes social media.

“All these things are going to help us develop better jazz musicians, more competitive and more engaged,” he says. “I’m hoping to give students a more 21st-century jazz studies experience.”

—Tony LaRoche ’85

PHOTO: BRANDON FULLER