There’s a place in Dublin on Parnell Street called The Big Romance.
That’s where you will sometimes find guitarist and singer Charlie Moon with his Big Romance band.
On Busywork it is enhanced exponentially by the charismatic presence of tenor titan, Michael Buckley.
Organ Freeman have played there in the rare old times. They’re still there regularly – driving dis aisy.
Watch the new glass cages, that spring up along the quay, in the words of the Pete St John song.
You could say that Organ Freeman are part of what was jazz in Dublin, in the Rare Old Times if you think that is auld is 2018 when they began there, personnel varying. But they are part of the retro loving continuum too which percolates everywhere on the Irish scene.
An organ, guitar ‘n’ vocals, drums, sax outfit – Busywork is reliable feelgood stuff from the get go. That’s about the size of it.
There’s no cheese or faux folkiness here. Buckley is formidable on the Darragh Hennessy penned title track that kicks things off.
Very superior old pale
Hennessy is the very superior old pale Hammond organist with his foot on the pedals as Dominic Mullan clanks along at the drum kit.
Buckley himself is a revelation on his own Ebb and Flow – best Irish jazz album in years.
Home cookin’
Soul jazz tunes include an extensively reharmonised version of Ray Brown’s ‘Gravy Waltz’ first recorded by Oscar Peterson as an instrumental in 1961. That Live at the London House in Chicago version had a New Orleans blues feel to it in the lilt that you kind of pick up sometimes elsewhere on an Allen Toussaint recording. Toussaint probably got it from Professor Longhair or James Booker. As for a vocals take, more relevant here, Jacqui Naylor did a hip live treatment of the Steve Allen words for this running-the-gauntlet humour laden song more than a dozen years ago found on Dead Divas Society.
Guitarist-singer, a proper double threat, Moon’s ‘Moonlight Dames’ makes the cut too. Son of Irish jazz and blues guitar Shelbourne Hotel legend Nigel Mooney, Charlie put out a great Chet Baker themed album last year – by far the best Irish jazz album of 2024.
This latest is less soft singing, although his vocals are peachy, more driving lounge jazz framed in a Georgie Fame fashion.
Moon guitar wise is a Barney Kessel man.
His vocal on ‘Gravy Waltz,’ which you could time travel down the Flamingo to instructively, isn’t as turbo charged as the 60s sound but it’s pretty tasty.
Frankly sentimental
Jule Styne song ‘Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry’ is here. The song was covered by Dinah Shore and by Frank Sinatra in the 1940s – it’s on Frankly Sentimental, two words that could be a subtitle here as an overall takeaway.
Hank Mobley’s ‘Hipsippy Blues’ is here too. What a fab choice from the most collectable jazzer in existence.
Mobley was in the Messengers when it came out in the late 1950s. Philly guitar legend Pat Martino covered it on his own 2017 album Formidable. You never hear covers of this gem speaking of new ‘uns so this is something of a unique selling point of the album under review.
Hennessy contributes a title ‘Skirts & Kidneys’ which has a Leopold Bloom tang to it in the nomenclature. Its melody is a bit like Cy Coleman song ‘I’ve Got Your Number’. Cécile McLorin Salvant did a delicious version of that 60s classic on her album The Window in recent years.
Highlights my sweet chickadee? Not at all a case of too few to mention. Quite the reverse.
Oh bucketloads your honour instead.
Jaunty No Strings Richard Rodgers Broadway song ‘Loads of Love’ is up there.
Moon also contributes ‘Here’s to the Rest’ and a paean, presumably, to the home of the black stuff, ‘St. James’s Gate.’
One face that lights when it’s near you
Another Jule Styne song ‘Make Someone Happy’ covered miraculously by Tony Bennett and Bill Evans on Together Again in the 1970s suitably follows on and then there’s Moon’s own ‘Milk & Honey’ among his originals, the whole shebang rounded off by a neat version of Duke Pearson’s evergreen ‘Cristo Redentor’ introduced to the canon by Donald Byrd in the 1960s on Blue Note album A New Perspective. Purveyors of rare old times jazz gigging around these guys know a thing or two about – it’s true.
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