Recently I’ve covered several live gigs which have been blind dates in all but name; a third party (friend, editor) who knows both myself and the other person, brokers a rendez-vous from which all concerned feel something positive may emerge. Lion-hearted as I am, I signed up for this specific assignment and then, having done so, endeavoured to improve the odds of a successful outcome via a little light background checking on my prospective companion.
My search engine revealed that Ms Owen has been an active architect in the shaping of the current popular musical landscape since 1996. She was born in London (albeit with staunch parental roots in Welsh music) but now makes her home in New Orleans, utilising where possible musicians with links to the Crescent City. Learning that her original collective name for these sidemen (they are now billed simply as The Callers) was The Gentleman Callers, my nostalgia-heavy antennae began twitching like lobster pots in a choppy sea, inhaling the faint aroma of eau-de-faded Southern Belle – think Amanda Wingfield or Blanche DuBois. I envisaged a milieu conjured up directly from the memory banks of Tennessee Williams, filtered through his fevered imagination and hinting that I may well be in for an evening of what academics like to label Southern Gothic.
Ms Owen does, in fact, find inspiration in ladies a tad more robust than the fabrications of Mr. Williams; creatures of flesh and blood with names like Sophie Tucker, Nellie Lutcher, Eartha Kitt and Blossom Dearie – female performers who insinuated innuendo into a fine art. Ms Owen long ago mastered – or is that mistressed – the secret of the successful gig. Bounding onto the stand, she grabs the audience by the scruff of the neck and refuses to relinquish her grip until they holler “uncle” a full two sets later. This methodology is, of course, tried and tested. It worked for Jolie on Broadway in 1913, it worked for Sinatra at The Paramount in 1942, and it worked yet again for Judith Owen at Pizza Express in 2026. Unlike Jolie and/or Sinatra Ms Owen shines brightest as an integral cog in a six-spoked wheel with David Torkanowsky’s piano, Lex Warshawsky’s bass, Jamison Ross’s drums, Ricardo Pascal’s tenor, and Kevin Louis’s trumpet, all happy to spin off Owen’s axle. From my vantage point a tad off ringside it was impossible not to monitor just how much this group was digging each other and their leader.
The repertoire was eclectic to say the least, but whether it was the seriously ancient (Blue Skies, 99 this year), the mildly old (If I Were A Bell, 76 this year, a mere stripling) or I Put A Spell On You (70 this year) – or her own newly written To Your Door, the effect on the SRO audience was the same. I was mildly surprised to find no Cole Porter in the repertoire; he and Ms Owen are a match made in Bawdeville, but having said that, I am of course, new to the world of Ms Owen and it may well be that she explored the likes of There’s A Fan, Come On In, It Ain’t Etiquette, But In The Morning, No, and My Heart Belongs To Daddy long before I became aware of her. Let me put it this way: if I were in the crowd-pleasing business, I’d want 10 like Judith Owen.
Judith Owen & The Callers. Pizza Express, 99 High Holborn, WC1V 6LF. Sunday, 8 February 2026
