Sean Fyfe popped up on Dave O’Higgins and Monkin’ Around’s mighty 4 in 1 last year.
O’Higgins returns the compliment here on this retro swinging bop and more release from the pianist. His Higness is an incredible soloist and finds places as on the vibrant ‘Focaccia’ in terms of sheer touch and feeling, doh, that only he knows. It’s the character in the playing that makes him so listenable.
And Follow-Up is full of character. While the tunes recorded in O’Hig’s studio in Brixton, south London, are largely Fyfe originals, glum they’re not, they are written in a certain style so the album tunnels into the seams of rare earth minerals mined for decades found in the so-called “Golden Age” of modern jazz in the 1950s and 60s. Jazz gold: “We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious” (Gollum).
So close your eyes and you will be naming names, dreaming dreams, muttering to yourself like that old geezer on the tube going aaargh, expletive, deleted, dropping his plastic bags full of secondhand Hank Mobley and Vee-Jay period Wayne Shorter records on the floor of the Northern Line yet again after a shopping trip for old platters as he dreams about the jazz he loved back in the day and still does today when the care home let him out to somehow amble down to Ronnie’s or he has in worse times managed to do a runner and escaped from the diktats of sister on the ward when he was in relaxin’ at Camarillo once again. Alas. Such beauty comes from such pain.
Obligatory carp, let’s get that out of the way. But it’s not even much of a grimace. But the Fyfe take on ‘Darn That Dream’ is a bit too manicured for my taste. The beautiful Jimmy Van Heusen melody that goes back to the late-1930s has been covered many many times and to be frank this isn’t in the same class as say the way Joe Farnsworth did it with Wynton, Kenny Barron and Peter Washington found on Time To Swing issued just 5 years ago during the Lockdown years.
“Darn that one track mind of mine, It can’t understand that you don’t care” – Eddie DeLange
More positively I preferred the more romping “businessman bounce” [to use a term the late Tempo & Blues in Trinity producer Tony Hall manager of The Real Thing adopted, not always as a term of approbation, admittedly] found on ‘Double Trouble’. The latinate figure drummer Matt Fishwick throws into the blend organically works well and there is a rampaging double bass role ably carved out out by Luke Fowler.
Obviously Fyfe has chops to burn but prodigiously gifted pianists litter the streets – on the London scene there are as many great pianists out there as you can see most days lined up among the pensioner community queuing to get into a Wetherspoons at opening time for a burger and a pint or 3 especially as the heating is on the blink back at the flat and there’s only the moggie for company and a sachet of Sheeba for supper to snaffle for sharing if stuck.
But what has he got to say beyond instrumentalism? Well, quite a lot. Clearly Fyfe is a retro-ist and stylistically to my ears his sound sits well with English pianist Rob Barron.
I’m not keen on the tune of Cole Porter’s 1940s song ‘You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To’ even when covered so very prettily by the likes of Dave Brubeck in the 1950s.
So I was relieved it is done in a different way at the beginning with a strong bass pulse that then opens into some very pleasant space that all concerned know how to cook up interestingly.
The title track hints at bugalú which is always an infectious sound so great when we get to that. No wonder they named the album after the piece. Also on the album is a take on Irving Berlin classic ‘Blue Skies’ which is the best of the standards chosen. There’s a lot of light in the harmonies and lovely scampering drum accompaniment from Fishwick. God I was thinking back to hearing the drummer at a 2021 gig in Brick Lane venue Ninety One Living Room when he wasn’t at his best. He’s much better here.
So final word: A swinging album. It’s a goer. And it could have been even more so if all the tracks were like ‘Reliance.’ Maybe there will be a follow-up to the follow-up. Pal, don’t be perplexed – that would make inordinate sense.
