CD Review: George Benson “Inspiration: A Tribute to Nat King Cole”

Inspiration: A Tribute To Nat King Cole (Concord Records)

By Brian Arsenault

Two versions of “Mona Lisa,” perhaps Nat King Cole’s most famous song, frame Inspiration: A Tribute to Nat King Cole.

The first, opening the album, was recorded by “Lil” George Benson in 1951 after he won a singing contest at the age of 8.  It seems a prophetic recording now that six decades later he has issued this remarkable tribute album, closing it out with an uncannily Nat-like version of the tune.

George Benson

Benson’s phrasing at the start of “new” version of “Mona Lisa” can’t be an accident.  It’s the highest tribute he could give to King Cole.  But there’s brilliance everywhere on the album.

Start with the big band sound of the Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra crashing us into Cole Porter’s “Just One of Those Things.” Wow factor very high.

Follow on with Wynton Marsalis leading us into “Unforgettable” wherein Benson accompanies his remarkable vocal with his equally distinctive guitar work.

And oh yeah, the late Nelson Riddle’s arrangements are all over this album.  Somewhere Ol’ Blue Eyes is smiling.

Want more?  Idina Menzel of Rent and Wicked fame joins Benson for an outstanding duet on “When I Fall in Love” and we’re only five songs into the album. This is the heart breaker/ tear jerker of the CD and Benson’s guitar is just right, as good as his harmonizing with Menzel.

Later, Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile” may also bring a tear and Till Bronner’s trumpet is as perfect as Marsalis’ on “Unforgettable.” After tears, there’s a smile waiting on the album’s version of Cole’s own “Straighten Up and Fly Right” with its wry swing era arrangement.  Benson has his longest guitar solo here and I wouldn’t have minded more of that throughout but there’s nothing really to complain about.

Nat King Cole, like Louis Armstrong, understood that in the 1950s and ‘60s a black artist had to be absolutely non-threatening to fully appeal to white audiences.  But neither sacrificed artistry on that altar.  They just gave a smile and made America love ‘em.

And why not.  The version here of “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter” has the orchestra playing just so good behind Benson’s smooth, smooth vocal. If it doesn’t bring a smile, you are probably terminally depressed. Benson’s gentle and accomplished approach makes him the perfect guy to do a tribute to Cole.

Riddle’s arrangements are perfect for the orchestra. The soloists like Marsalis and Bronner absolutely get it and fit like a well tailored suit.

There’s an ironic similarity between the career of Cole and Benson.  Cole first came to prominence as a jazz pianist and Benson as a jazz guitarist.  Their stunning vocal skills were hidden for a while but then the world received even greater gifts.

Any song not mentioned in this review is just as good as those that are.  The album’s as close to perfect as humans get.

Still, what I’ll carry with me forever is “Lil” George Benson singing his heart out it 1951.  Thank the musical gods the recording survived.  And that Benson stayed on the planet to give us this as he hit 70.

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Here’s an added  wrinkle:  Benson will be on QVC this evening (Tuesday, May 21)  at 10 p.m. (ET) to introduce the album and make a special offer.

Benson photo by Nanni Zedda courtesy of George Benson.

Record Rack: Susanne Abbuehl, bree

Oceans Apart

 By Brian Arsenault

The following albums and their artists couldn’t be more different.  That’s part of the fun.  It’s a wide musical world with all kinds of room or, in the broad thinker Jesus’ terms, “there are many rooms in my Father’s house.”  In this case I think it would have to be Mother’s house, though.  This will become clear below. Or maybe not.

 Susanne Abbuehl

 The Gift (ECM Records)

The great strength of this album of sung poetry, mostly from Emily Dickenson, is that gifted Swiss-Dutch singer Susanne Abbuehl lets the rhythm, the music if you will, of the words set the songs.  It may also be the album’s great weakness, if it has one, because in its own terms it is beautiful  throughout.

The whole feel of The Gift is gentle like Dickinson and the two other featured poets, Emily Bronte and Sara Teasdale, three giants of poetry a century and a half ago.  Gentle but not soft or saccharine, also like Dickinson, and like Abbuehl’s wondrous voice.

Sometimes Abbuehl’s voice is more spoken than sung but then she finds a melody and the poetry becomes so seductive (in a nonsalacious way, of course, it’s Dickinson remember).

Dickinson saw infinity in a clover. She wasn’t wrong. Abbuehl and her understated band are true to that minimalism.

Matthieu Michael’s flugelhorn is the other star of the album, even taking the lead at times and always with the right tonality for Abbuehl’s voice.  Wolfert Bederode provides marvelous accompaniment on piano and Olavi Louhivuori’s percussion is a match for the musicianship of the others.

Matching poetry and music is as old as the individual forms. In the earliest days, there probably wasn’t any difference.  It is said that the Odyssey was sung by blind Homer as he journeyed from royal house to royal house.

Still, it is here that I think Abbuehl and crew could have pushed the form a bit harder.

On “By Day, By Night,” a Teasdale poem, I grew excited as the music almost takes off.  Let it go, Sue (may I call you Sue?) I muttered.  But they didn’t. Not quite. Not here or anywhere on the album. She is always the cultured Susanne.

With a bit more jazz, the combo might have shaped the words in new and different forms with the music.  But here it was always the other way round, perhaps out of respect for the poetry.  But I can’t help but wonder if they would have found/created new meaning.

That may yet remain to be done. Yet we are left with something fine in an increasingly crude world.

 bree

bree  (Werewolf Tunes)

To paraphrase, Pete Townshend is reported to have once said that Keith Moon wasn’t a rock drummer, he was rock in the flesh.  While I certainly hope she lasts a lot longer than Moony, there is something of that in bree on her self titled album.  The Nashville rocker doesn’t seem so much to play the music form as to explode out of it.

She says she isn’t retro and I’ll take her at her word.  But this is rock as it should be; stripped down — “watch me rip my clothes off” — rolling, bouncing, roadhouse, r&b rooted, Joplin polished, stay up all night stuff.

A little power trio led by bree’s singing and Gibson Flying V guitar. Stand up bass and pounding drums complete the picture.

As always when the music is special, Boones the Cat came in the room and stared at me.  Who’s this? She wanted to know.  Someone who could become a legend, I replied.  Boones stayed until the album was over and then went into the next room and napped. Nothing more to hear.

But while the music played, they could probably hear it all the way to the religious commune where she was abused property until being kicked out at 17 for having a boyfriend.  Probably another one of those communes where the old guys want all the young stuff for themselves.  When are we gonna castrate those creeps or at least close them down?

Somehow bree kept self and soul alive to rock n roll and “not have time to be saved.”

There’s another Who connection, the guys who “don’t need to be forgiven.”  She’s clearly been to the streets.  “When you don’t drink whisky, you’re cold . . . You can’t resist me when you drink . . .” Those are hard rock lyrics; out there, real, raw.

She gives new maybe truer meaning to “All American Girl” who wants to “Dance All Nite (With my finger in the air). She’s tough but not mean, she’s seen enough of that.  You just have to “love me the way I am.” I do.

She’s a real rocker in another overproduced era of pop music. This is who Jagger should jam with while on tour, not the manufactured pre-packaged Katy Perry.

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Interestingly, both these albums have a piece entitled “Forbidden Fruit.”  bree’s is very different from Abbuehl’s/Dickinson’s — but maybe not . . .

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To read more posts, reviews and columns by Brian Arsenault click HERE.

Jazz CD Review: The Daniel Bennett Group

The Daniel Bennett Group

Clockhead Goes to Camp (Manhattan Daylight Media Group)

 By Brian Arsenault

When Clockhead Goes to Camp this summer, you should go with him. Like summer, this album is irrepressible.

I was reminded recently that Charles Mingus said “Making the simple awesomely simple . . . That’s creativity.“ The Daniel Bennett Group takes us to a whimsical place where the simplicity and sensibility of children has not been lost.  Rather, it has been found in this music.

The Daniel Bennett Group

I will soon be giving this album to a near one-year-old not because it is a children’s album — I generally hate the sing songy drek that is passed off as kids’ music — but because it is beautiful enough to delight a child. Or the child in you.

Oh yeah, the song titles.  They’re all like that:  the title song, “An Elephant Buys a New Car,”  “The Old Muskrat Welcomes Us,” even a scary one — “Cabin 12 Escapes into the Night.“

In fact, I was so pleased — nay, delighted — by the album’s whimsy that it wasn’t until the fourth track, “Dr. Duck’s Beautiful New Kitchen” that I went, hey, this is a jazz album. And that it is.

The title song is a remarkable piece full of nuance.  Bennett is as adept on flute and clarinet as he is on alto saxophone. On this tune, you may not always know where the instrument changes occur. At least I wasn’t.

Daniel Bennett

Tyson Stubelek’s percussion work is outstanding throughout; rhythmic from here to Brazil and on to Africa. Peter Brendler is one of those bassists whose playing you aren’t constantly aware of because he lays it so naturally underneath; self effacing for the player but deeply satisfying for the listener.

What I have to say about guitarist Mark Cocheo can’t be separated from Bennett, not because he isn’t excellent in his own right but because the two seem like brothers musically, picking up from each other seamlessly.

Two great examples of that connection come on “Whatever it Might Be” — with an imbedded poem by Rimas Uzgiris that is hardly childlike — and “Paint the Fence.”

On “Paint the Fence,” the acoustic guitar and flute are partnered, not simply played together. On this loveliest piece of the album you may envision Tom Sawyer on a great spring morning carrying the paint pail he intends someone else to labor with.

Bennett’s flute on “Nine Piglets” is like a warm breeze through the trees.  Cocheo’s guitar smoothly picks up the freedom of the melody.

“Sandpaper is Necessary” (more great song titling), gives us Bennett playing his sax alone. But he’s not really alone.  His notes dance along as Charlie Parker might have played them.  Bennett has listened to them all — Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins come to mind as well as Bird. I flatter myself that I recognize a tribute to them all in the fleeting two and a half minutes here.

On “John Lizard and Mr. Pug” near the end of the CD, we return to the gentleness of the opening songs as Cocheo’s guitar counterpoints Bennett’s alto saxophone. Lizard and Pug walk down a country lane.  I wonder if “Pressed Rat and Warthog” were ever this happy.

The “Ten Piglets” and Coceho’s guitar lead us out of the album‘s magic. Regretfully. A bit like leaving childhood, at least if your childhood included lots of very fine music.

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To read more posts, reviews and columns by Brian Arsenault click HERE.

Record Rack: Steven Casper & Cowboy Angst; Noah Preminger and Terri Lyne Carrington

Of Americana Rock, American Tenor Sax and American Genius Reprised

 By Brian Arsenault

The range of great American music never ceases to amaze me.  When they’re writing about our civilization, such as it is, a number of centuries hence I am quite sure it will be our music that is most treasured and remembered.  Unless the whole grid collapses, of course.

 Steven Casper & Cowboy Angst

Trouble (Silent City Records)

There is just no disputing the good time of bad times this EP (not LP) provides the listener.  Five tunes, one done twice, to take you deep into the heart of American music done road house bounce — blues, r&b, zydeco, Tex-Mex, Looziana all tied up in a just dazzling display.  In other words, rock and roll to delight the soul.

What Casper and his new Cowboy Angst lineup understand is that it’s all connected.  From the hills of West Virginia to the Delta. From Nashville to New York. At its best, it’s all American music. The Band knew that and so does Casper.

“Cat On A Hot Tin Roof” opens the proceedings and rightly so; a nasty tasty blues/gospel tune you won’t hear in church, with two McCrary sisters singing backup to Casper’s lead vocal.  In this version, it’s the guy who’s the cat.

Then here comes “Soul Deep”. Real nice lap steel guitar by John Groover McDuffie. Tom Petty would probably have a hit with this.

“I know where you end is the start of me.”

The title song is pure Louisiana  barroom rock.  How can trouble make you feel so good.

“I don’t go looking for trouble. Trouble comes looking for me.”

But the absolute gem of the album is “How Can I Miss You When You’re Not Gone?” Keeps the Cajun going and the irony can’t be missed.. The song is repeated as a “front porch” instrumental with banjo and fiddle to finish out the album.  But the first version will make you dance alone if there’s no one to dance with.

“Hey Marie” reaches way back to the 1950s to what Don and Phil Everly might have cut with Chuck Berry if songs could have been so damn bad back then without being censored or masqueraded. Chuck knew how to do that.

Marie writes on the wall: “Had a real good time. Don’t bother to call.”  Years later he sees their history “while standing in the grocery line.”

This little album is so good we might not deserve it. But it’s here this summer.

Noah Preminger

Haymaker (Palmetto Records)

Something special your way comes on May 14.

Noah Preminger, like Hemingway, boxes.  And like Hemingway he’s clear and concise.  He wants you to get it without the merely decorative and overly descriptive.  Here, here it is. Hear it.

On Haymaker, his tenor sax is moody and reflective at times — think Hawkins — as on the opening tune “Morgantown.”  Lovely and cool at other times — as on “Tomorrow,” whether you liked the musical Annie or not.

All saxophones played well are great to me, but tenor is the most satisfying; expressive and deeply touching. It’s why Kerouac called players of the instrument “tenorman.” They were special. Still are.

There are good songs all over the place. Preminger can’t remember what girl he wrote “My Blues for You” for, so it’s for all the girls you’ve loved.  Ben Mondor’s guitar solo picks up Preminger’s mood but it almost hurts when his horn breaks off.

Monder steps out front in the intro to his composition “Animal Planet.” Real smooth. Then Preminger comes in with such melodic lines.  A real favorite of mine.

On “Stir My Soul” and elsewhere, drummer Colin Stranahan sometimes annoys with his insistent pounding.  Oh, he’s good but he doesn’t need to fill every available space.  More Charlie Watts, less Keith Moon, please. Or listen to the next album (see below).

Still, he’s fine on the Dave Matthews song “Don’t Drink the Water.” The band makes you feel so good here as they start real smooth, go off into space and then return to the song’s melody.

“Motif Attractif” is a sweet little sendoff to close the album.

Preminger’s playing — ascending, descending, roaming, retuning — is just so sensitive to tonality, melody, timing and the other musicians that he is special to hear.

A haymaker in boxing can produce a knockout all on its own.

 Terri Lyne Carrington

Money Jungle Provocative in Blue (Concord Blue)

Shoot for the top.  Can’t hurt and it might work.

Drummer supreme Terri Lyne Carrington does just that with a reworking of Duke Ellington’s remarkable trio recording Money Jungle with Charles Mingus and Max Roach.  She gathers up the superb piano of Gerald Clayton and bassist Christian McBride with a few others and nails it.

I’m kinda late reviewing this album that came out during the winter but it got buried in the stack and just has to be paid homage to the way she pays homage to Ellington.

Even when she throws in a few of her own songs she seems true to the Duke.  I think he would have liked them. A lot.  And Clayton gets his own cut, “Cut Off,” which also resonates as a true Ellington descendant.

But the Ellington tunes, oh yeah.  A money hating downer narrative leading us into the album is overridden by the joyousness of the music that follows.  Clayton’s piano complemented just perfectly by Carrington’s drumming. She understands that the spaces are as important as the hits.

The only jarring note in the tune “Money Jungle” is the music being interspersed with speech clips from various politicians.  Doesn’t do much for me.  Money may be the enemy of art, but try paying the rent without the coin from gigs and recordings.  Politicians don’t do anything for art or anyone.  They don’t make things better for anybody but themselves.

But back to Ellington’s music.  “Fleurette Africain” demonstrates beautifully Mingus’ quote in the liner notes about simplicity.

“Anybody can play weird; that’s easy (and) making the simple complicated is commonplace.  What’s hard is to be as simple as Bach.  Making the simple, awesomely simple… That’s creativity.”

You’ll get it when you hear it.  Simple. Note to note. Chord to chord. Builds, weaves but always simple.  You hear every bit of it.

Same with “Backward Country Boy Blues,” with “Switch Blade,” with all of the Ellington compositions so lovingly handled here.

The wrap comes with “Rem Blues/Music” and the recitation of an Ellington poem within.

“Music is a woman . ..

When you think what you think,

She already knows”

Terri Lyne knows.

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To read more posts, reviews and columns by Brian Arsenault click HERE.

Record Rack: Spin Doctors, Bracher Brown and Quattro

            Sometimes a Reviewer’s Just Lucky

            Three Very Different Albums Connected Only by Their Excellence

 By Brian Arsenault

 Spin Doctors

If the River Was Whiskey (Rufus Records)

If you’re a ‘90’s kid, chances are you can still remember the words to Spin Doctors’ “Pocket Full of Kryptonite” and that favorite guy anthem to the hated former girl friend/bitch, “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong.”  I mean was there ever a nastier tune on hit radio and was a band bigger than Spin Doctors in the era?

So 25 years down the road, what is a listener to expect? Maybe not expected, but one sizzling blues album is what you get.

Hey, you can’t be a teen band forever, but these guys can do this till they’ve been around a half century.

“If the River Was Whiskey, (you’d) have no trouble drowning me.”  Hell of a lyric, hell of a song.

Chris Barron’s voice is deeper than in the early days. Whiskey? Cigs? Or just the passage of time. It works.

And Eric Schenkman’s guitar can flash it like he’s playing for Billy Boy Arnold, or do the slow hand. The rhythm section of Aaron Comess on drums and Mark White on bass are tight as can be.

The whole band is.

There’s some Howlin’ Wolf (title song) here and some Allman Brothers feel (“Scotch and Water Blues”)  as well.  Yet the Spin Doctors are their own self.

On tunes like “What My Love?” it’s real hard to sit still. “Scotch and Water Blues” just builds and builds and “About a Train” has a nice Delta flavor suitable for roadhouses.

The album makes you ache a bit for smoky bars smelling of beer and less savory stuff.  But the playing is real clean.

Bracher Brown

Broken Glass and Railroad Tracks (Rock Ridge Music, digital only)

A tough old businessman of Irish heritage that I knew and valued until his death said that one of the worst prejudices was that a young person couldn’t do a good job, maybe better.

So here comes Bracher Brown who makes you think that if the Beatles had been born in America under 20 years ago, this is what they might have sounded like.  Intelligent lyrics about the start of love, the end of love, the desire for love. Rhythms that we used to call infectious.  Seductive guitar licks.

“Singing songs about what life was supposed to be.”

Young but not untested in the furnace of life.

 “Haven’t slept in days but I’m all right.”

Even acquainted with absence that may be death –

“living with your ghost.”

And a love song — “Loving You” — that rings true; a song about what he knows about life at 18 that’s not to be patronized.  After all, we may never know more, we may just shut down and call it experience.

He’s not shut down at all. Thank goodness.

Quattro

Poppzzical  (Quattro Sound)

Ok, so you know there are four of them on Poppzzical. Mixed gender (two of each), mixed ethnicity, mixed musical backgrounds.  So, of course, all American in all our splendid, confusing mishmash of cultures that often produces remarkable music.

There’s a violin, often gypsy-like (Lisa Dondlinger). She can play for Pavarotti or Dancing with the Stars.

There’s a cello, also an amazing Latin influenced voice (Giovanna Moraga Clayton). Uh, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, New West Symphony).

Are you starting to get the picture?  They can match the exuberance of their own crafted “Good Day” — “try to bring me down will be time wasted” — with some Vivaldi done as classical sound with jazz shifts.

There’s a guitar which can lead and support, strum and sing (Kay-Ta Matsuno) who can play for Baby Face or Natalie Cole and a whole bunch of other folks too numerous to name here.

Finally there’s percussion work born in Tijuana, Mexico (Jorge Villanueva) who’s played on movie scores, in Latino bands and co-owns a film and TV scoring company.

So, as you can imagine, there’s a lot going on in this album they’ve made.

“Silky” is happy and melancholy at the same time.  There’s a guitar solo that resembles a violin piece.  Or is that a violin with cello as bass. Or both.  Ha, I don’t care. It’s music that’s unique.  I can’t think of any assemblage that sounds like Quattro.

Their Spanish language soul and Latino dance music.  If I could samba I would have on “Mi Conguero.“  That may even be the wrong dance but it’s the right feeling.

The album closes with “Hana Bi” and the guitar and violin take flight together.  The cello soars after them.

And maybe that’s it: flying, soaring, breaking free of forms while paying homage to them. In a musical world of too much sameness, the individuality and creativity of this young group is not to be missed.

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To read more posts, reviews and columns by Brian Arsenault click HERE.

Brian Arsenault Takes On: A Guitar Tour of the World, the Phony Hipness of Country Muzak, the Tastelessness of Network News and Free Music from Moscow

By Brian Arsenault

Annalisa Ewald

Live at the factory underground (Dionysian Media)

Annalisa Ewald is a classical guitarist of significant reputation. But don’t let that stop you from her performance live at the factory underground recorded last year in Norwalk, Connecticut.  Even if you’re like me and equate great guitar with Eric Clapton and Pete Townsend you’ll find much to like as she brings us to Brazil and Argentina and Renaissance Europe; happy little tunes, melancholy melodies and tangos and gypsy flamencos.

She reminds us that these “classical” pieces sprang from the soil, the seamier parts of town and scandalous, sometimes illegal rhythms and dances.  Her brief comments throughout the album are good natured and inviting, sometimes self deprecating, and never pedantic.  And the playing seems faultless even though she can joke about jarring misplayed notes (by someone else).

And whatever your tastes in music you’ll occasionally hear snatches of “tunes” that you know from cultural experiences ranging from  movies to old Bugs Bunny cartoons. All in all, a delight.

Some of the proceeds from sales of the album, release date April 23, will be donated to the John DeCamp Fund “helping veterans heal through music and caring.”

The ACM Awards

The Grand Ol’ Opry was at least genuine. Genuine hillbilly and unhip maybe, but music that came down from the hill country and back roads.  What so-called country music has now become is a bunch of over-age prom queens and dorks in designer cowboy hats playing the kind of vapid pop crap that in one guise or another has been around for six decades or so.

The biggest news from the Academy of Country Music “awards” show seems to be that everyone’s ex, Taylor Twitt, didn’t win anything. So who cares?  Name me a significant artist who did win anything.  Nice dresses and hair though.

They trotted out Stevie Wonder for some incomprehensible reason.  Who’s advising him these days anyway?

They did do a nice little tribute to Dick Clark which the equally vapid Grammys couldn’t manage.  So I guess we should be grateful for that, though I can’t imagine anyone watching long enough to catch it. Dick brought kids all over America a taste of real rock at times but he could never distinguish it from the slop pop that he also promoted with equal enthusiasm.

The same holds true here.

The Foulness of Network “Entertainment” News

Annette Funicello

One of the first child stars of television, Annette Funicello, passed away on Monday, April 8.  She was the Mouseketeer that eleven year old boys first squirmed at watching her begin to fill out her modest sweater. And of course she sang and danced. All the Mousketeers did.

She went on to make those dreadful beach blanket movies with Frankie Avalon crooning to her against the California surf. Still, she has always seemed a kind presence, even while suffering from the debilitating Multiple Sclerosis that forced her to retire from public life fifteen years ago.

Her husband and caretaker, Glen Holt, authorized a video of Annettte in her current condition, supporting research in Multiple Sclerosis treatment via the Annette Funicello Research Fund for Neurological Diseases.  In the video, we get the obligatory shots from the Mickey Mouse Club, the beach movies and her getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, accompanied by Mickey of course.  But the slimy TV programmers who bring us their own slants on “news” couldn’t restrain from emphasizing the photos of her late in life that were unfortunate and won’t be described here.  If he were around today, Dante would put those shapers of popular culture in the lowest circle of Hell.

Gregg Robins

 Snowing in April

As someone who lives where it sometimes snows in April, how could I pass up Greg Robins downloadable album of Demos — Snowing in April.  And I’m glad I didn’t.

Let me go right to the last song which truly touches the heart.  “Believe”  sings of a father’s advice to his oldest daughter and what makes it so striking is that Robins sings it with his then 15 year old Casey.

Casey’s voice will never again be exactly as it was when she sang on this recording.  She will never again be exactly the same.  That is the bittersweetness of growing children and grandchildren.  They can’t wait for the next age and parents want to hold on to the current one just a little longer.

“Believe in your dreams. They can always come true.”

The passage of time pops up a number of times on this warm album from a New Yorker now living in cold Moscow. (Moscow!!?) “The Middle of the Show” isn’t about a stage show.

“Middle age is all the rage.”

In “Where Were You?” where Robins is joined on vocal by Remy Sepetoski, at 35 “I knew where I was, where were you?”

But the album’s not maudlin about fleeting time. It just urges us to not miss “How Lucky” we are just to be here. Robins is sometimes a bit off-key singing but he hits mostly right notes writing neat songs.

You can listen to the album at Robins” website for free.  Must be the old Soviet socialist share the wealth spirit at work, if it ever was.

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To read more posts, reviews and columns by Brian Arsenault click HERE.

CD Review: Charles “CD” Davis and Friends

Charles “CD” Davis

24 Hour Blues (Blues House Records)

By Brian Arsenault

If I told you Eddy Arnold’s torch song “You Don’t Know Me,” done as a big band blues  number on Charles Davis’ 24 Hour Blues is but one of this album’s delights, would you buy it?  You should.

In this dickless era of the Justins and the emasculating Taylor Twitt, there is still music with balls. There is still the blues.  And Davis — former guitarist for the late Calvin Owens — has assembled a remarkable ensemble.  An ensemble, including two great chick singers, to show that the blues and real Eros are not dead yet.

If you missed this album, as I did when it first appeared in late 2011, be grateful that it’s being “reserviced” as Davis gains recognition.  Ironically, he’s been nominated for a “best new blues artist” award. I mean he played with Owens’ band for a decade, but recognition is merited.

This album has a big band blues core, but it also echoes with road house small blues combos, classic acoustic blues, even big jazz bands. On the aforementioned “You Don’t Know Me,” the horn section does some backing of the vocal like it was an Ellington piece.

Charles “CD” Davis

Davis plays in several styles, all clean as Tide washed.  A personal favorite is his acoustic blues guitar work on “Lonely Man” while Jabo (the Prince of Texas Zydeco) sings an echo of Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee and Muddy.  And is that a twelve string Davis is playing?

He saves his truly electric blues masterpiece for last on “Blues for My Father” where he starts with a true slow hand.  Restraint, holding back, building tension, Anthony Sapp’s magic bass underneath. Building, building. Neal Cassidy would have lost his mind.

Then soaring, stratospheric speed but always, always so controlled.  Not many can do that.  I think the organ comes in near the end because the guitar burst into flames.  At least any more and it might have killed.

And the vocals. Oh Lord, we have winners throughout.

On “Minor Thing,” Roberta Donnay is as jazzy as she is with a trumpet underneath like a ‘50s noir film. Tasty guitar solo by Davis. Earlier she raises the album’s temperature on the classic “That’s How I Learned to Sing the Blues.”

Speaking of heat, Trudy Lynn’s “It’s Tight Like That” reminds us that not everything on a blues album is G Rated, or PG, or even R maybe.  The band sings choruses sort of like — but not exactly like — a ‘40s big band backing the lead singer. But this is no “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree,” here. She is intemperate, thank goodness. Or badness.

The guys are good too. Already mentioned Jabo, who also shines on “Help Me Baby,” a juke joint jump, and “Old Fashioned Woman,” which slides along like an otter down a chute. Rue Davis provides some smooth vocals to complement the deep, growly Jabo here and takes the lead on others. Rue’s the guy who redefines how you’ll ever think about “You Don’t Know Me” again.

And Charles Davis is all over this album.  He wrote or co-wrote several of the songs, arranged the album, even put it out on his own label.  His guitar playing alone would have been enough, as well as his clear affection for the big band blues of which Owens was perhaps the greatest. The Owens band is well represented here.

Even better, Davis doesn’t feel the need to always put himself out front. He complements, doesn’t dominate, the vocals.  He lets horns lead when they should, singly and in concert. There’s even a great violin lead or two.

There’s too often this tendency to talk of the blues in the past.  Too many “last of the great bluesmen” obituaries as we try to pay tribute to the originators.  “CD” on this CD shows us that the blues present is about as good as anything can be.

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To read more posts, reviews and columns by Brian Arsenault click HERE.

Record Rack: Barry Altschul, Troy Roberts, Renee Yoxon and Mark Ferguson

The Old, the Young and the Silver Tongue

By Brian Arsenault

Barry Altschul

The 3Dom Factor   (TUM Records)

On the occasion of his 70^th birthday, Barry Altschul proves that the passing years haven’t slowed his drumming or dimmed his compositional skills. Economy of motion and precision of thought seemingly take the place of youthful exuberance and energy, though he doesn’t lack for those qualities either. I remember seeing Buddy Rich in a Holiday Inn lounge, of all places, late in his career with a group of younger musicians making a glorious sound with his drums while he appeared to hardly move.

Along with Charles Lloyd’s recent album, Hagar’s Song, in celebration of his 75^th birthday,  this album demonstrates that all of us aging past even extended adolescence can revel in the promise of extended creativity. Hopefully, anyway.

Two songs of many worth mentioning:

“Irina” opens with romantic, stylish sax playing by Jon Irabagon that turns in on itself, then is superseded by a bass solo by Joe Fonda that inverts yet again, then here comes a melodic sax once more. And drums, always drums underneath, filling silences, stepping forward then back.

“Oops” brings us Caribbean drum rhythms.  No, wait, the drumming moves further back, to Africa.  Altschul’s solo is mesmerizing. The sax comes in and you awaken. Where are we?  Lots of ideas floating around here. This sea is deep.

This album spans songs from Altschul’s career right up to the present. He hasn’t missed a beat. For technical insights beyond my range, there are Bill Shoemaker’s fine liner notes, like a short course in jazz evolution.

Troy Roberts

Nu-Jive 5  (XenDen Music)

While a veteran drummer leads a great trio, Australian-born saxophonist Troy Roberts heads up a combo that numbers the Nu-Jive 5 title with a cover that sort of looks like a dorm picture.  And I mean no disrespect.  This collection of young guys can play like crazy in support of Roberts.

Tim Jago on guitar makes a particularly strong impression, but they’re all good. Everyone gets a lead and every one holds his own.

Troy without question.  You’ll hear traces of Hawkins and Parker but you get the sense that the day will come when it’ll be said of a new tenor sax player that he reminds one of Roberts.

Roberts’ spaces between notes on a song like “One Day Wonder” makes you want more, like a fine glass of red wine after each sip. Ahhh. And he teases with surprise motion on “Mono Stereos.” Oh we’re going here, there.  Oh, ok, I‘ll try to keep up.

There are shifts of mood from the soft and melodious to brassy (as in bold) solos for all on “Night on the Town” where you’ll feel like you’re having one. You might even wish that Roberts was a bit more selfish on the solos because the band just lights up when he breaks in.

It’s all good.

Renée Yoxon and Mark Ferguson

Here We Go Again (Renée Yoxon)

I know, I know.  Regular readers of my reviews must be thinking “are there really so many fine female jazz singers on the scene right now?”  Well, there are and anyone who’s listened to the Ottawa silver bell named Renée Yoxon, who also writes great lyrics, knows it’s true again.

Add the plus that she and pianist, composer and arranger Mark Ferguson are just so  compatible that it seems they’re a permanent band rather than a single (hopefully not) collaboration.

And oh the lyrics: drinking morning after coffee with “the hope the hurt gets swallowed on the way.” Watching a lover “while you take off your disguise.” “But while the lights are low, Don’t go.”

Something here may enter the Great American Songbook, maybe more than one. No offense, Canadians, I know she’s yours but you don’t have to be from the States to craft such a song.

She sings. Ferguson plays. A great trumpet, Craig Pedersen, and a great sax, Frank Lozano, come and go just when they should. And she sings. Even when it’s just notes, no words, on the album’s bossa nova tribute, “Sao Paulo.”

She sings.

To read more reviews, posts and commentary by Brian Arsenault click HERE.

Record Rack: Tine Bruhn & Johnny O’Neal, Jackie Ryan and Karen Souza

Three Queens, All Aces

By Brian Arsenault

This is a time of remarkable female jazz singers.  So many who are so good. Undoubtedly changes in social mores have increased the pool of women willing to run the risks of being a jazz singer and the industry‘s willingness to accept them. But I think there’s more than a sociology treatise here. I think there’s magic involved, as there was with the surge in bop jazz musicians in the late 40s and great rock in the second half of the sixties. Leave it to others to explain. We get to enjoy.

 Tine Bruhn & Johnny O’Neal:

 nearness (Burner Records)

Think of a time when a singer simply stood next to the piano.  She sings, he plays and, oh yeah, there’s a great tenor sax on some songs. Now’s the time and Tine Bruhn makes the most of it with the marvelous jazz pianist Johnny O’Neal and young sax player, Stacy Dillard. She’s deep into the American songbook of Cole Porter, Hoagy Carmichael, Johnny Mercer and others and she has the remarkable ability to make each song hers by the end.  “The Nearness of You,” from which the album title is drawn, is simply seven and a half minutes of bliss.  If an album can glow with light, this one does.

Jackie Ryan with John Clayton & Friends:

 Listen Here (Open Art Productions)

Jackie Ryan, I think, could sing just about anything and on this album she just about does. Jazzy, bluesy, in English and in Spanish, old classics and new compositions. Her “I Loves You Porgy” is nearly overwhelming. Hell, it is overwhelmingly beautiful. So is band mate John Clayton’s “Before We Fall In Love,” lyrics by the great Bergmans to touch the soul. Sidemen? You want sidemen: Gerald Clayton on piano, Graham Dechter on guitar, Gilbert Castellanos on a trumpet born in Mexico and journeyed to American jazz. More. I’m not even sure this is a jazz album. Not completely.  Jackie kind of defies categories.  She’s music.

 Karen Souza:

Hotel Souza (Music Brokers)

We begin in a Paris hotel with an affair, “prisoners of desire” wondering “how did it get this far.” It goes on like that. For the whole album. Sexuality in song. Longing, desire, surrender. This hotel where “I’ve Got it Bad” for “Delectable You” even if you’ll “Break My Heart.” Her version of Marvin Gaye’s “Heard it Through the Grapevine” is 110 degrees in the shade. Phew, well Marvin was about heat after all.  Yet underneath all the physical attraction and consummation there is a sadness at the impermanence of affairs and attraction. In the end, you have to “Lie to Me.”

To read more reviews, posts and columns from Brian Arsenault click HERE.

Record Rack: Gerald Clayton, Steve Kuhn and Roberta Piket

Pianos On The Loose

By Don Heckman

 Gerald Clayton: Life Forum (Concord Music)

I’ve been listening to and marveling at the playing of Gerald Clayton since he was displaying all the makings of a unique jazz artist while still a teen-ager.  Now 28, with three Grammy nominations, his credentials have been thoroughly established, and never more so than on this far-ranging set of performances.  Working with his regular associates – bassist  Joe Sanders and drummer Justin Brown – he moves confidently and inventively through a compelling collection of intriguing original works.  Clayton’s rich imagination reaches out to embrace the contributions of saxophonists Logan Richardson and Dayna Stephens, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, vocalists Gretchen Parlato and Sachal Vasandani and poet Carl Hancock.  That’s a diverse collection of musical sounds, styles and substance – a challenge fully met by a pianist well on his way toward the top of his field.

Steve Kuhn: The Vanguard Date (Sunnyside)

With a track record that reaches from John Coltrane in the ‘60s into the multi-hued present, Steve Kuhn has been a pianist whose creative accomplishments embrace the entire jazz spectrum, from bebop to avant-garde.  The Vanguard Date, first released in 1986 on the Owl label is a stunning display of Kuhn in his fully mature mode, moving with utter confidence from the grooving bop of Tadd Dameron’s “Superjet” to the soaring lyricism of his own “Lullaby.” At the heart of the program — his virtually symbiotic interaction with bassist Ron Carter and drummer Al Foster.

Roberta Piket: Solo (Thirteenth Note Records)

The rich thoughtfulness that characterizes Roberta Piket’s inventive improvising is immediately apparent on the first track of Solo, in which she plays a darkly moody version of “I See Your Face Before Me” in a style reminiscent of Erik Satie’s Gymnopedie No. 1.  Her previous three albums have ranged through strings and woodwinds, electric instruments and the classic piano trio.  But this time out she approaches the piano in the classic solo sense, as a virtual orchestra in itself.  In the process she brings new light to such familiar jazz lines as “Monk’s Dream” (in two variations), Chick Corea’s “Litha,” Wayne Shorter’s “Nefertiti” and Duke Ellington’s “Something To Live For.”  Add to that a lyrical rendering of “Estate” and a final, gently blues-driven piece by her father, Frederick Piket.  The result, in sum, is an intriguing overview of a jazz pianist who still hasn’t quite received the ovations that her unique talents deserve.