Liz Cole: I Want To Be Happy (lizzycolemusic.com)
On this album California-born singer Liz Cole lays 10 tracks on us, half of which even Mr. Bean would recognise and even the five that were new to me are well worth hearing. She says her parents introduced her to everything from Bartok to Blue Mitchell, and she has worked with, among others, Larry Koonse, Joe LaBarbera, and Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band. After becoming “entangled in a variety of day jobs” she finally realised she didn’t want to work in an office.
Throughout she is accompanied by a fairly orthodox quintet – piano, bass, drums, vibes and guitar. Ms Cole is not afraid to give them their heads once she’s laid down a first run-through of the lyrics, and they, in turn, are not afraid to strut their not inconsiderable stuff. From bar one of track one we are aware that we are in for some seriously good old-school jazz, although she gives a slightly bizarre reading of Cole Porter’s You’re Sensational. In the movie High Society Frank Sinatra sang it as a passionate love song to Grace Kelly; here Ms. Cole performs it as an uptempo jazz-waltz, for all I know targeting the Eiffel Tower, or Sydney Opera House.
She should be given some sort of meaningful award for reaching back to 1930 for the Eubie Blake-John Finke-Andy Razaf valentine to the juke-box, I’d Give A Dollar For A Dime. Elsewhere she wrote her own lyric for Erroll Garner’s Passing Through, whilst her and the band’s reading of Hoagy Carmichael’s Up A Lazy River is done in a perfectly matching lazy tempo. Even the newer (to me) material, such as Love, I’m Still Here, I found easy to take. In my case it’s nice to be able to recommend an album by a newcomer, and I do so wholeheartedly.
George Melly: Sings Fats Waller / Let’s Do It / Like Sherry Wine / Makin’ Whoopee (BGO Records BGOCD1532)
If outré lights your fire you could do worse than George Melly, never a man to allow convention to get in the way of flamboyance. It’s something to which I can attest, having seen him both in live performance and in a cinema queue at 9 a.m. I’m here to say the one was indistinguishable from the other. His colourful attire made Max Miller look like all four members of the Modern Jazz Quartet, and in the case of the cinema (we were standing in line for an early morning NFT screening of Let’s Get Lost) it was topped by a seriously large fedora.
Melly performed initially with Mick Mulligan, from 1948 and into the 50s – a time when traditional and Dixieland jazz was enjoying a boom in the UK. Then, having left the world of jazz behind for some 15 years, he reinvented himself as a vocalist, this time with John Chilton and the Feetwarmers, and the four albums on three CDs that comprise this set all date from that period. They were released at the rate of one per year from 1979 to 1982. Roughly halfway through the first album I became aware that the tempi were virtually the same on every track.
George Melly Sings Fats Waller is the only one of the four albums in which a big (12-piece) band supplements the quartet that was the Feetwarmers. Perhaps this is as good a time as any to confirm that Melly on disc is a pale shadow of Melly live and deal with these albums accordingly. “Sings Fats Waller” may convey a wrong message, implying that the album consists entirely of compositions by Waller. That isn’t quite the case, for while there are solid Waller compositions – Ain’t Misbehavin, Honeysuckle Rose, Blue Turning Gray Over You – we also get to hear material that Waller was closely associated with – My Very Good Friend The Milkman, Your Feet’s Too Big, I’m Gonna Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter and It’s A Sin To Tell A Lie. Overall, this is one fine entertainer paying tribute to a great entertainer and evocative of an era where joyfulness and melodic musicianship were a welcome antidote to the harsh realities of the world in which they were created and performed.
The second album, Let’s Do It, is an eclectic mix of Tin Pan Alley titans – Cole Porter, Walter Donaldson, Victor Young – and the bawdiness which was meat and drink to Melly – The Lady Wants Some Jazz, I Want My Fanny Brown, Gonna Catch You With Your Britches Down – and the sounds that got the young Melly hooked – Backwater Blues, Downhearted Blues. Throughout, the Feetwarmers supply solid accompaniment and although the lion’s share of solos emerge from the bell of John Chilton’s trumpet, there’s still plenty of room for Stan Greig’s piano and Barry Dillon’s bass. A fine addition to the annals of easy listening.
Like Sherry Wine dates from 1981, one year after Melly and the Feetwarmers played several successful gigs in New York highlighting the repertoire of the late composer and pianist Clarence Williams, who, as much as anyone, defined the pioneer New Orleans jazz performer. Perhaps unwisely, Melly includes Williams’s Baby, Won’t You Please Come Home, inviting comparison with Sinatra’s definitive version from the 1950s. It was Williams, of course, who wrote I Ain’t Gonna Give Nobody None O’ This Jelly Roll, a surprising omission given Melly’s penchant for innuendo. He does, however, compensate with You Got The Right Key But The Wrong Keyhole, and I Wanna Hot Dog For My Roll. In a nod to Williams’s roots he includes Way Down Yonder In New Orleans, and in a nod to his idol, Bessie Smith, he includes also Empty Bed Blues. As always the accompaniment by the Feetwarmers if first class, and a good time is had by all.
The final album, Makin’ Whoopee, is arguably the most eclectic, with W.C. Handy (Yellow Dog Blues) rubbing shoulders with Johnny Mercer (Goody Goody), Dorothy Fields (I Can’t Give You Anything But Love), coming full circle to Louis Armstrong (Someday You’ll Be Sorry). All in all this fourth album strikes just the right note to round off a four-album set that can’t help but appeal to any mouldy figs still out there, introduce the joyousness of trad and Dixieland to anyone sufficiently open-minded to dip a tentative toe, and remind us all of a genuine one-off, George Melly.
