Instrumental group The City Champs takes center stage

The City Champs -- drummer George Sluppick, guitarist Joe Restivo and organist Al Gamble -- release their debut album, Safecracker, tonight at the Hi-Tone Café.

On Monday morning, Midtown's Café Eclectic resembled some sort of barbecue-dipped version of the famous Hollywood hangout Spago. Film director Craig Brewer dropped in and ex-"American Idol" contestant Alexis Grace sat in a booth with her child. Connecting the two Memphis celebrities, however, were a trio of largely unheralded jazz heads huddled over a table crowded with late morning breakfasts.

The City Champs -- drummer George Sluppick, guitarist Joe Restivo and organist Al Gamble -- release their debut album, Safecracker, tonight at the Hi-Tone Café.

The City Champs -- guitarist Joe Restivo, drummer George Sluppick and organist Al Gamble -- are the latest in a long line of soulful Memphis instrumental groups, a tradition that stretches at least as far back as the Mar-Keys and up through such current groups as the Bo-Keys and includes Booker T. & the MGs and the Hi Rhythm Section.

Once confined to their long-running weekly gig at Midtown bar the Buccaneer, the group has busted out in recent weeks. The trio, already featured earlier this year in the Civil Rights documentary "I Am A Man," is featured in Brewer's upcoming MTV series "$5 Cover."

And Friday night the group releases its debut album, The Safecracker, with a show at the Hi-Tone Café.

At this rate, jokes Gamble, it wouldn't be surprising if the band ended up backing hot commodity, Grace, former babysitter to his three girls.

Individually, the members of City Champs are three of the most respected sidemen in Memphis. Restivo, a graduate of the New School Jazz and Contemporary Music Program, is a longtime collaborator with such acclaimed local musicians as Charlie Wood and Billy Gibson. Sluppick has backed everyone from Albert King to Sha Na Na. And Gamble, originally from Tuscumbia, Ala., has fronted the Gamble Brothers Band with his sibling Chad and currently plays keys with John Paul Keith & the One Four Fives and, with Sluppick, the current incarnation of the Bo-Keys.

But for now all three say they are most invested in the little instrumental combo that started as a sideline.

The City Champs evolved a little over a year ago out of the remnants of another instrumental group, the Grip. The Grip began a lengthy weekly residency at the Buccaneer and in 2007 recorded an EP for Archer Records. But when Sluppick and Edmaiston began missing the regular engagement for more lucrative gigs with the Florida band J Grey and MOFRO, the Grip got lost.

In its place Restivo and Gamble started a new group that focused on the organ, combining the influence of Booker T & the MGs with the Blue Note soul-jazz groups of the 1960s.

"When Al and I first got together we started off just doing Jimmy Smith tunes," says Restivo, evoking the name of the late organist probably most responsible for introducing the instrument to jazz and R&B. "But as we went along, it grew. You have Jimmy Smith and then you have the late-'60s, when guys start adding like soul beats. So you have like Lou Donaldson and Alligator Boogaloo."

Or as Sluppick, who eventually rejoined with Restivo and Gamble in the new group, calls it, "jazz with a James Brown beat."

The group had not been playing together long when they recorded The Safecracker with Scott Bomar. The Bo-Keys founder and producer of Brewer's "Black Snake Moan" soundtrack had originally been tapped to record the Grip's full-length record, but instead Restivo brought in a batch of new songs which the group knocked out in two days, still hashing out arrangements in the studio.

"We made the record without any expectations or real intentions," says Restivo. "I really like that we went in without any preconceptions and just made this thing and it's really honest and fresh. ... We were coming off influences like Blue Note where those sessions people would just show up the day of the recording and here's what you're playing. So it kind of worked."

After a year of shopping The Safecracker around, the band is releasing it on Bomar's new Electrophonic label. And they are planning to go back in the studio to record the follow-up, a more plotted collection of tunes inspired by the '60s and '70s soundtrack works of composers like Ennio Morricone.

The City Champs Record Release Party with the Bo-Keys Horns, Scott Bomar, DJ Chase One and Redeye Jedi

Friday at the Hi-Tone Café, 1913 Poplar Ave. Doors open at 9 p.m. Tickets are $5, $10 for entry and a CD/record. For more information, call 278-8663 or visit hitonememphis.com.

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