John Pizzarelli: My Blue Heaven (Chesky Records EVSA30705)
Recorded in New York in April 1990, this was seven-string guitarist and vocalist John Pizzarelli’s first major album. His distinguished accompanists were his father (guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli), Clark Terry, Dave McKenna, Milt Hinton and Connie Kay. The album – a collection of jazz standards – illustrates Pizzarell’s adaptation of Charlie Christian’s single-note playing, together with the Nat King Cole’s Trio stylings.
All the songs receive nimble and affectionate treatment – including an outstanding guitar duet with his father on Don’t Get Around Much Any More. Other highlights are Clark Terry’s trumpet and unique vocal interjections especially on Gee Baby, Ain’t I Good To You and Best Man – and the immaculate rhythm section of McKenna, Hinton and Kay. My only reservations concern Pizzarelli’s humorous but rather tiresome vocals. His laudable aim is to reach a “popular” audience rather than a jazz constituency. Better he should stick more to the guitar.
That said, this is a warm-hearted and well-chosen compilation. Not least, the sound quality is remarkable. David Chesky, founder of the label, said that “Our philosophy was simple, to create the illusion of five musicians in a real three-dimensional space.” Charles Waring, in an informative appraisal, asserts “You’d never guess the musicians were reading charts,” adding “For lovers of retro flavoured swing jazz, it’s nothing less than heavenly. The record sounds as perfect today as it did back in1990.” As we used to say, “Right on!”
Peter White: Light Of Day (Lobster Music LOB 1005)
Seventy years old, Peter White, a musician previously unknown to me, was born in the UK but now resides in Los Angeles. Characterised as a “genre-defying acoustic guitarist”, he also lists his other instruments as bass, keyboard, recorder and accordion. Over a 35-year career he has won four no.1 Billboard Contemporary Jazz Albums and seven no.1 Smooth Jazz Airplay hits.
Light Of Day has him surrounded by a large orchestra – but with shifting personnel on the 10 titles – all White compositions. Unfortunately, there are no accompanying details to flesh out the content (and purpose) of the recording, his 17th. Elsewhere, he’s been quoted as saying “I was working on the album mostly during the pandemic and in many cases the songs are deeper and more introspective than some of my more recent albums. I picked the title, Light Of Day, because it reminded me [that] through the darkness, there is always light and better times ahead”. ’Nuff said?
Equally at ease with Latin, R&B, pop and semi-jazz backgrounds, White has been creatively immersed in three of these genres. But whatever his worthy intentions, for better or worse, he has created and produced what I can only (and politely) typify as “smooth” but nondescript non-jazz. The sparse liner notes at least indicate which performer appeared on which tracks. Odyssey, perhaps the best and longest cut at over eight minutes, benefits from the unflagging support of drummer Eric Valentine and bassist Nate Phillips. To again quote the composer: “As you set out on a long journey, there is always trepidation and uncertainty. The dictionary definition of ‘Odyssey’ is a long and adventurous journey or experience. Eric and Nate add drama, tension and release in all the right places”. A pleasant but not a seminal session.
Muddy Waters: The Best Of Muddy Waters (Waxtime 526018)
Most commentators agree that McKinley Morganfield (aka Muddy Waters) was one of the prime exponents of the emerging urban blues in Chicago following the Great Migration from the segregated South in the 1940s. Born in acute poverty on a Mississippi plantation in 1913, and raised by his grandmother, he acquired the nickname “Muddy” at a young age because of his propensity for playing in muddy water. Discovered and recorded by Alan Lomax in 1941, in Chicago he recorded with Otis Spann, Little Walter and Willie Dixon. In 1958 Chess released an album The Best Of Muddy Waters (playing electric guitar) and it now reappears in a 180-gram, transparent vinyl LP with four additional tracks: Evans Shuffle, Too Young To Know, She’s So Pretty and I Feel Like Going Home.
This release also benefits from the original liner notes by the celebrated Chicago broadcaster, critic and writer Studs Terkel. Among his pertinent comments are the assertions that “When Muddy Waters shouts out his identity ‘[I’m Your] Hoochie Coochie Man’, you’re almost a full believer, so persuasive is this artist of the country blues.” Significantly, Waters was to transform and transmute country into urban blues. His influence and world-wide popularity endured for the remainder of his life (he died in 1983, aged 68) and would be difficult to exaggerate. The now venerable Rolling Stones named their band after his 1950 recording Rollin’ Stone.
Waters was well aware of his artistry and in a 1978 interview said “My blues looks so simple, so easy to do, but it’s not. They say my blues is the hardest thing in the world to play.” The anonymous contributor to a shorter sleeve note makes the succinct point that his fellow musicians admired “his remarkable sense of timing, his command of inflection and pitch shading, and his vocabulary of vocal sounds and effects, from the purest falsetto to grainy moaning rasps”. That he was often accompanied by such stellar performers as Willie Dixon, Little Walter (harmonica) and Otis Spann (piano) led to his unique skills being burnished. Any track on this LP will reward listeners. My own choices: Hoochie Coochie Man, Rollin’ Stone, I’m Ready and I Can’t Be Satisfied. Terkel reminds us of the opening line of Hoochie Coochie Man: “Gypsy woman told my mother, just before I was born, I got a boy child comin’, gonna be a son of a gun.” He was.
