This year has been a bit different. I haven’t been so habitually besotted by straightahead labels from the States and Canada like Cellar Live and Posi-Tone. By contrast I have preferred their European equivalents Criss Cross Jazz and SteepleChase. However there are always exceptional releases from across the Atlantic that direct me back to Cellar Live particularly.
‘When old love starts to sing again’
Stewart, a Toronto born 54 year old saxist who has a deliciously old fashioned tone and is tasteful with it – think Scott Hamilton a little or Eric Alexander – chooses ‘Next Spring’ a rarely heard Marv Jenkins tune to open the record. Stewart is here with pianist Tardo Hammer, the brilliant bassist Paul Sikivie known for his work in an early classic phase with Cécile McLorin Salvant, and drummer Phil Stewart who is Grant’s younger brother. There are very few versions of this, rendered as a laidback swinger, out there – I can think only of Gene McDaniels’ from In Times Like These (1960) and Les McCann’s on Les McCann Sings issued the following year.
Also on the album and the track that really caught my attention most is a take on Sam Coslow’s ‘Kiss and Run’. Sonny Rollins does an amazing version of the tune and you can feel on some level or other that Stewart is thinking of Rollins when he plays the tune in this fine version.
‘The park that we walked in
From ‘There’s No You’
The garden we talked in
How lonesome they seem in the fall’
Recorded at shrine of shrines Van Gelder’s in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey last November in a single day there’s an enjoyably languorous version of Wayne Shorter classic ‘Nefertiti’ and some curveball choices too like Hal Hopper’s ‘There’s No You’ a 1940s song sung by Sinatra and covered by Ben Webster beautifully in the 1960s on The Warm Moods. Warm? That’s the operative word throughout this collection of delights practically tailor made – jazz lover – to warm the cockles of your heart.
MORE FROM MARLBANK
Biréli Lagrène, Elegant People, PeeWee! ****
Swinging French guitar icon Biréli Lagrène does not disappoint with his best album in simply years. Its sentimental insouciance and savoir faire are something of a revelation that may cure any lingering feeling, dear reader, you might possess of jadedness. Listening shakes off such torpor.
James Kitchman, Floating Sky, No label ***
Pristine pastoralism informs the latest quartet release by English guitarist James Kitchman.
Stacey Kent, A Time For Love, Naïve Records ****
Quiet and reflective from one of the greatest classic jazz singers of our times. The Jim Tomlinson co-write with Cliff Goldmacher ‘What Goodbye Is For’ appeals most to me.
