Bob Anderson: Live! (Jazz Hang Records JHR910BA)
It’s a toss-up whether I should subtitle this piece “I Really Should Get Out More”, or “Let’s Hear It For Serendipity”. Every month or so the editor sends out a list of new releases and invites us to nominate any we care to review, and increasingly there are more names that are new to me, and I select based on the album title and/or a one-sentence description, and that is how I stumbled on this album by a performer I’d never heard of. It appears that I’m the last to know that Mr. Anderson is widely and well-regarded as an impressionist singer, not unlike the way Sammy Davis Jr started out.
Here, however, Mr. Anderson performs 16 selections in his own voice, culled from live performances in venues ranging from New York, Las Vegas, Boston, Salt Lake City. So, the question is, is he any good? Actually he is, rather. The first track, So Much Music In Me, is one he wrote himself and conveys why he feels compelled to sing. There are no musicians credited but they are, in the main, full-sized “swing-type” orchestras. The song-stack is eclectic, ranging from standards such as Come Rain Or Come Shine to rarely performed quality titles like Lost In The Stars and Some Other Time to newer material – at least to me – including Streaks Of Lavender, Midnight In Malibu and two by Paul Williams, I Still Miss You and All I Lost Is You. If you’re partial to well-written songs, performed by a fine voice, and backed by a (mostly) swinging big band and, then this album may well have your name on it.
Jack Wood & Nichaud Fitzgibbon: Movie Magic (Jazz Hang Records JHR903JW)
This is the second time in one day that I’ve been pleasantly surprised by a performer previously unknown to me. To read in the press release that the album “consists of some of Wood’s finest recordings” suggests that this is a best-of compilation rather than a new album. No matter, the content is what really matters and by and large it is fine. Apparently at some stage Mr. Wood “discovered” Australian singer Nichaud Fitzgibbon, and took her under his wing to the extent that two of the 12 tracks are solos by Ms. Fitzgibbon, leaving 10 tracks for Mr. Wood, with the backing divided evenly between small combos and big bands.
One of the nicer things on the album is the inclusion of fine yet neglected songs like the opener Gypsy In My Soul, which is done as a medium bouncer, a setting that suits it admirably. I confess that I have not heard many, if indeed, any male singers take on Secret Love, and again Mr. Wood weighs in with an uptempo reading. The backing, whether combo or ork, is out of the right bottle. The material ranges from Gershwin (A Foggy Day) and Arlen (One For My Baby) to Johnny Mandel (The Shadow Of Your Smile) and the album as a whole is a fine way to beguile the best part of an hour.
Doug Ferony: Alright Okay You Win (Ferony Enterprizes Music FE1011)
By coincidence three titles that were assigned to me for review came from the same supplier and arrived together in one package. All three were surprisingly good, all three featured vocalists and all three vocalists were backed, either totally, or in part, by a big band. It’s a big ask to unleash three albums on a jaded palate like mine in the space of half a day and expect bouquets all round. Surely one, if only marginally, has to be inferior to the other two, and I’m very much afraid that this is it. Not that there’s that much wrong with it, and it will surely find its audience out there, if not, alas, in my house.
What we get is 14 tracks that swing relentlessly so that the overall effect is to feel assaulted rather than seduced by swing. Perhaps it was a mistake for Mr. Ferony to open the album with a number that we associate with a much more delicate sound, that of Karen Carpenter in one of her signature songs, We’ve Only Just Begun. To hear this swung within an inch of its life needs some getting used to. Some of the tracks, of course, invite, if not demand a swinging interpretation and Mr. Ferony steps up to the plate on titles like All Of Me, I’ve Got The World On A String and the title track, but against that others, such as Anything Goes and A Hundred Years From Today, don’t quite work as eight to the bar. On the whole it shouldn’t have far to go to find its audience.
Listening, as I have just done, to three albums all of which reflect the sounds of the 20th century set me musing on the pluses and minuses of the popular-music landscape. The Titans – Sinatra, Haymes, Cole, Tormé – may be SRO at Pearly Gates East, but some of the pygmies that succeeded them are walking tall.
Julia Danielle: Julia Danielle (Shifting Paradigm Records SP212)
This debut album from a “fast rising star in the vibrant Chicago jazz scene”, the multiple award-winner Julia Danielle, arrives garlanded with praise from several quarters. It seems churlish to decline to jump aboard the fast-moving bandwagon before the rising tide of acclaim whisks it beyond reach, yet I raise my tiny triangle above the parapet and into the path of the 76 trombones advancing inexorably, secure in the knowledge that nothing I say can stay its all-conquering progress.
I speak then, as a dinosaur hopelessly adrift in a world of technology and offer these indisputable facts; aided and abetted by Joshua Achiron, guitar, Clark Sommers, bass, Dana Hall, drums and Chris Madsen, tenor sax, Ms Danielle meanders through eight songs composed mainly in the 1930s and 1940s, and appears unable to go two bars without straying so far from the melody that she requires both a compass and an ordnance survey map to find her way back.
This reminds us of nothing so much as that group of musicians who, in the mid-40s, took the chord sequences of well-known songs and imposed brand-new melodies on to them [i.e., engaged in jazz – Ed], but they at least had the grace to then give the original melodies new titles. Ms. Danielle, whilst in emulating such songs, retains the original title even as she renders the tune unrecognisable. [Don’t worry, readers, they’re perfectly recognisable – it’s personal interpretation, typical of jazz, where Leon expects textbook showtune recitals – Ed.] For all I know, of course, this may well be de rigueur in the current musical landscape, and I am the little boy who no one hears saying in bewilderment “Look, everyone, the King is not wearing any clothes”. Then, happy low, lie down. All that remains is to wish the album well.
2024 favourites
Ella Fitzgerald: Sings The Cole Porter Song Book (Poll Winners Records 27363). I reviewed some 21 CDs in 2024 – eight brand new and 13 reissues – and the one standing head and shoulders above the other 20 was first released on vinyl 68 years ago. Ella’s Cole Porter Song Book oozes class from every groove: 32 stylish Porter songs, filtered through the pipes of an acknowledged mistress of jazz singing, backed by the cream of West Coast session musicians. Age has not withered nor custom staled its infinite variety.
Down For The Count At Cadogan Hall. In my book there’s very little than can equal let alone eclipse a live performance from a swinging big band – an audience with the Dalai Lama, the view from the Jungfrau, a one-on-one with Sinatra over a Jack Daniel’s or three – all, alas, beyond my pay-grade. I did, however, get to bask for a couple of hours in October 2024, over the next best thing, arguably the best swing band currently working, Down For The Count. My cup of tea runneth over.