Asylum Street Spankers
Austin, Texas’ The Asylum Street Spankers are Tin
Pan Alley ragged and beat poet sharp. They’re Dixieland with a pre-war jazz
jump. They’re deranged and irreverent in the extreme. They are 100 percent
acoustic (that is to say, un-mic’d and unplugged) and
will cordially invite folks to “shut the fuck up” if the crowd banter rivals
the onstage volume, or lack there of.
Their transgressive defiance is only matched by the musicianship
on stage. What initially appears to have the charm of a group of friends
picking around the campfire quickly turns to raunch
when the bands performs dusty-sounding ditties about things like winning the
war on drugs and sleeping in the wet spot.
FrontmanWammo leads the band
standing cocksure like the captain on a sinking ship, wailing soulfully and
blowing some unbelievable harp. He is so steeped in every literal, musical,
political, sociological, sexual, botanical, and generally delinquent aspect of
the American cultural underground that studying him should be a class project
for high school seniors.
Vocalist
and multi-instrumentalist Christina Marrs is the lone
skirt in the outfit. She has a knockout voice that falls somewhere between
Helen Kane and Betty Boop. She will unhinge you.
The Asylum
Street Spankers’ stew of musical styles (rendered on fiddles, guitars,
washboards, saws, etc.), political leanings, lustful urges, and literary
debauchery makes them unique. The pure acousticity is
refreshing. Maybe it’s too high brow. Maybe it’s too lowbrow.
Either way they’re your favorite band. Maybe you just don’t know it yet. (FD)
Cedar Walton
From his early days as pianist for Art Blakey
& the Jazz Messengers in the 1960s through his stints with a veritable
Who’s Who of jazz giants — including Joe Henderson, Hank Mobley, Milt
Jackson, Lee Morgan, and Donald Byrd — Cedar Walton has been at the top of
the list of jazz pianists for half a century. While with Blakey,
Walton composed some of the Jazz Messengers’ most engaging tunes, including
“Mosaic,” “Ugetsu,” and “Bolivia.” But he has also had an
outstanding career as a leader, releasing more than three dozen albums over the
last four decades. Whether he is playing one of his own
wonderful tunes or interpreting the music of Billy Strayhorn
(as he did on a recent recording), Walton can be counted upon to find and
exploit the essence of the composition. And anyone who caught his group
at the 2004 RIJF can attest to the excitement he generates when he launches
into one of his riveting solos. This promises to be one of the festival’s most
exciting concerts. (RN)
Etta James
Etta James has no reason to be jealous of anybody. Anybody. Yet her
new album, All The Way is a disc full
of covers that James says she wishes she had done first.
Honey, Etta
James did it all first.
Still,
songs like Simply Red’s “Holding Back The Years,” John
Lennon’s “Imagine,” R. Kelly’s “I Believe I can Fly,” and Prince’s “Purple
Rain” all get Etta-fied on All The Way. Her voice is as rich and smoky as ever, but this album
is strictly a mellow-down affair. Even when she hits on James Brown’s “It’s A
Man’s Man’sMan’s World”
she never quite winds into the roar that caused the mic
on her early recordings to rattle and hum. Granted, Ms. James is pushing 70,
but something tells me that raunchy spark still burns deep just waiting to
ignite on stage.
Etta James
was born Jamesetta Hawkins in 1938 to a teenage
mother in Los Angeles.
She believes pool hustler Minnesota Fats was her father. As with most soul, r&b, blues, and early rock ‘n’ roll musicians of the
day, James got her start singing in church. She moved to San Francisco and formed The Creolettes in 1952. It was here that she caught the ear of
Johnny Otis. It was Otis who gave James her stage name and recorded her first
record “The Wallflower (Dance With Me, Henry),” an
answer to Hank Ballard’s dirty ditty “Work With Me Annie.”
James
signed with Chicago’s
Chess Records in 1960, and over the next decade she would cut enduring classics
like “All I Could Do Was Cry,” “Trust In Me,” and her
biggest hit, “At Last.”
James’
sound has always been sugar-sweet with a raw undertone — a coo with a growl
— an erotic collision of coquette and harlot. She has always been able to
exude both romantic love and lustful urges often within the confines of one
song. Etta James has gotten a lotta folks laid.
Drug abuse,
failed relationships, and constant battles with her weight have plagued her
throughout her career. Her weight got to the point she had to perform sitting
down. But recent gastric bypass surgery has enabled the legend to shed 200
pounds and she’s standing onstage once again poised to rock the joint. She’s
got the new platter, her two sons Donto James (drums)
and Sametto James (bass) in the band, and shows no
signs of slowing down
I love her.
Now if she’d only call me back. (FD)
Kenny Garrett Quartet
Whether he is playing alto or soprano saxophone, Kenny
Garrett has pleased audiences for decades with his imaginative solos and
virtuosic technique. Garrett was something of a saxophone prodigy, attracting
attention while still in his teenage years when he was recruited for one of the
country’s most prestigious bands. In 1978, at the age of 18, Garrett joined the
Duke Ellington Orchestra (then under the direction of Mercer Ellington, Duke’s
son). He then moved to New York
where he took a chair in the Mel Lewis Orchestra. He had already released his
first album as a leader (in 1984) when he got a call from Miles Davis. Garrett
joined the long, historic list of sidemen, apprenticing to the master for five
years and contributing to four of Davis’
albums. Garrett has recorded a dozen more albums as a leader since the
mid-1980s. He has also remained at or near the top of the Down Beat Critics and Reader’s Polls as Best Alto Saxophonist. (RN)
MK Groove Orchestra
I once referred to Brooklyn’s
MK Groove Orchestra as a band that bops all over the map with brass knuckle
brass and pornographic funk, a band that couldn’t sit still, like an 8-year-old
with a chocolate saxophone. Well, upon hearing the band’s new platter, the
knuckles are bloody, the pages are stuck together, the chocolate has melted,
and the little bastard is screamin.’
The
13-plus-piece band essentially takes the big band artillery and let’s loose in
territory uncharted by big bands — conventional ones, anyway.
MK Groove
Orchestra’s progressively vintage sound is big and mind-blowingly
cool. But hey, don’t fence them in. As much as the classic big band wail of
Goodman, Miller, Dorsey, Brown, Shaw et al was the soundtrack for a generation,
the MK Groove Orchestra transcends timeline classification by goosing classic
lushness with a contempohaphazardry,
all the while brazenly staring down the apocalypse. It’s like waiting for the
Sun Ra to rise.
Greatest Hits finds the band embracing
jazz and insanity in the same ballsy bear hug. It starts off fairly free-form
crazy, skirting jazz, bop, and more exploratory chaos. I dunno,
maybe the band is weeding out the casual fans like The Mothers used to do.
There are definitely fans of every aspect of this band — the good, the bad,
and the ugly — and some fans who’ll only be able to cling to the bands
not-too-frequently-visited conventional blasts (you know, the stuff that makes
a little more sense). It’ll be fun finding out which one you are. You may be
surprised. (FD)
Mose Allison
He’s smooth and cool. He’s hip and hysterical, wry and sly.
A self-described “realist with a sense of humor,” his double entendres, clever
turns of phrase, and innuendo make Mose Allison
contemporary music’s Yogi Berra.
Parked in
front of the piano, Allison’s music is a blend of his bluesy Mississippi roots with the sophistication of
Monk and Haig — some of his early influences, along with vocalists Charles
Brown and Percy Mayfield. Allison is simultaneously slick and raw.
Now in his
late 70s, Allison’s influence has permeated the rock world with artists like
Van Morrison, John Mayall, The Who, The Clash, Johnny
Winter, Eric Clapton, The Yardbirds, Elvis Costello,
The Chesterfield Kings, and Bonnie Raitt all putting
themselves some Mose down on tape.
Though
probably referred to more as a jazz musician, Allison’s keen tempering of the genre
with the earthier, more visceral sounds of the South has him perched on a
bluesy fence. And it’s all tied together with a lyrical bow of wit, wisdom, and
keen insight. Just dig the words on “I Don’t Want Much”: “I don’t want much in
this world/It’s the simple things I treasure/’Til I
die I would get by on fame, riches, and sensual pleasure.”
Some of us
might get lost in all the jazz, but we all wanna
laugh…and maybe even learn a little something along the way. (FD)
Preservation Hall Jazz Band
Sure, there were all those Elvis 45s I used to get at Key
Drugs in StutsonBridgePlaza
for a buck. Or The Gene Cornish & TheUnbeatables records in my parents basement. Or the Saturday nights sitting in front of the TV diggin’ Hee Haw.
But New Year’s Eve at The Eastman Theatre was probably what had the most impact
on me as a musician and my life-long love affair with American music. It was
here — from age 7 through my late teens — that I caught The Preservation
Hall Jazz Band each year.
The frontmen of the group at that time, Percy and Willie
Humphrey, were old men, slouched casually in chairs but blowing some salacious
salvation outta their instruments. Dixieland jazz,
spirituals, even a little blues strutted, strolled, wailed and cried outta these cats. It was uplifting, sho’
nuff, but it stirred something a lot deeper and
darker in me. Preservation Hall has proved to be the measuring stick on my
thrill meter for any and all music, and remains so to this day.
Founded in
1961 as the house band for Preservation Hall in New Orleans’ French Quarter, the band began
touring the world in 1963. Within its ranks at any given time were players who
had rubbed elbows and swapped solos with legends like Jelly Roll Morton, Louis
Armstrong, Buddy Bolden, and Bunk Johnson.
Though new
blood is slowly working itself into the group as its older members move on to
the sweet by and by, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band is about as close to the
bone — and soul —as you’re gonna get. (FD)
Tom Harrell Quartet
Tom Harrell recently told the Los Angeles Times that he considered playing jazz as similar to the
experience of artists who paint spontaneously, reacting to what they see. “Life
is so intriguing because there is constant change,” Harrell said. “There’s a certain shading for every moment. That’s what we do when
we play. We express our feelings through the textures and colors of the sensual
material world and then transcend that into the spiritual realm.”
Those words
certainly fit the music Harrell makes whenever he picks up his trumpet. From
the late 1960s through the mid-1970s Harrell earned his stripes in the bands of
Stan Kenton, Woody Herman and Horace Silver. The next decade found him in the
company of Bill Evans, Lee Konitz, George Russell,
and Phil Woods. From the mid-1980s on Harrell has recorded 20 albums as a
leader. His career is all the more remarkable because he has had to deal with
schizophrenia. Despite this difficult struggle, Harrell has released some of
the most beautiful and sensitive music of the last several decades. (RN)
Wayne
Shorter Quartet
Saxophonist Wayne Shorter did stints with Horace Silver, Art
Blakey and Maynard Ferguson in the late 1950s and
early 1960s, but it was in the mid-1960s, when he joined Miles Davis’ classic
quintet, that Shorter emerged as one of the most gifted composers and players
in jazz. In 1970 Shorter took another bold step when he joined Joe Zawinul and MiroslavVitous to form the great jazz fusion group Weather Report.
All the while Shorter was composing wonderful tunes like “Footprints” and
recording excellent albums as a leader.
A recent
two-disc compilation, Footprints: The
Life and Music of Wayne Shorter, nicely traces Shorter’s
eclectic career, including his work with Blakey’s
Jazz Messengers, his classic album cuts, tunes he wrote for Davis (“Nefertiti”)
and Weather Report (“Heavy Weather”), and his instrumental contributions to pop
albums, such as Steely Dan’s “Aja” and Joni
Mitchell’s “Dry Cleaner from Des Moines.” From classic albums like Speak No Evil to his recent live CD, Beyond the Sound Barrier, the common
denominators are inventive compositions and adventurous improvisations. Shorter’s current group — featuring John Patitucci, bass; Danilo Perez,
piano, and Brian Blade, drums — constitutes one of the finest supporting
ensembles playing today. (RN)
Whit Smith’s Hot Jazz Caravan
Guitarist Whit Smith pumps western swing with caffeinated
European jazz like Django on the dusty trail. You may
remember Smith from when he played two Jazz Fests ago with western swing trio
Hot Club OfCowtown. All
eyes may have been on the beauty up front settin’ her
fiddle on fire, but the band got its giddy-up from Smith’s percussive chops,
rhythm changes, tight runs, and chords that an ordinary person would need seven
fingers and a fistful of trucker speed to pull off.
Venturing
out on his own and fleshing out the sound a bit now with his Hot Jazz Caravan
(just dig that licorice stick, won’t you?), Smith continues on the retro,
pre-war jazz trail. Jimmy Bryant, Eddie Lang, and Django
Reinhart are all channeled through Smith’s furious attack, almost manifesting
in the stage ether and the steam rising from Smith’s guitar and hands.
This
quintet is minimally amplified and yet the sound seems to shrink and grow
according to surroundings, adopting melancholy or joy as those surroundings —
and those lucky souls therein — may dictate. I’m banking on joy. (FD)
Woody Allen and his New
Orleans Jazz Band
There’s this writer/director named Woody Allen. Maybe you’ve
heard of him? He’s known for his movies, but he loves playing jazz,
specifically the feel-good Dixieland variety. So in addition to his prolific
film career he formed a jazz band to showcase his talents on the licorice
stick. The group — also featuring Simon Wettenhall
on trumpet, Jerry Zigmont on trombone, Cynthia Sayer on piano, Eddy Davis on banjo, ConalFowlkes on string bass, and Rob Garcia on drums —
has toured Europe and plays a regular Monday night gig at New York City’s
Carlyle Hotel. For a behind-the-scenes glimpse of Allen and the band, check out
Barbara Kopple’sWild
Man Blues, which screens during the festival at the
Little Theatre and follows the New Orleans Jazz Band on their European tour.
(ER)
This article appears in May 31 – Jun 6, 2006.
