Time machine jazz (CD reviews)
By phum Mon, Jan 31 2011 COMMENTS(0) Jazzblog.ca
Filed under: Larry Goldings, CD reviews, Harry Allen, Ehud Asherie
Is tenor saxophonist Harry Allen the Dr. Who of jazz? You might think so, given the two recent CDs that feature the hornman, who turns 45 this year but revels in an esthetic and sound that was in full bloom decades before he was born. To read what the producers write, it’s as if the hornman is the very sound of nostalgia, transporting listeners to a more mellifluous, pre-bop time. But is that a good thing? Read on…
Modern Life (Posi-Tone)
Ehud Asherie (featuring Harry Allen)
The epigraph penned by Dick Whitman on the inner packaging of Modern Life reads:
It’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards… it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels — around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved.
The citation is artfully indirect, but I believe it means to give listeners an emotional crutch when it comes to appreciating the music from Ehud Asherie, a pianist in his early 1930s, his featured saxophonist Allen, bassist Joel Forbes and drummer Chuck Riggs. Under Asherie’s leadership, the group plays music that is decidedly “old-fashioned.” My wife, it should be said, offered that adjective, along with a big smile, because she is simply a person with open ears rather than jazz critic of the give-me-innovation-or-give-me-death school.
While my wife could not be bothered to analyse the details, most she was taking into consideration aspects such as Allen’s diffuse, pre-Coltrane sounds on his horn, Asherie’s reverence to swing and bop language (down to the Tatumesque fills and use of diminished chords when a more “modern” pianist would add extra alterations) and the overall, happy, bouncy time feel of the group. Here’s a clip of Asherie and Allen playing I’m Putting All My Eggs in One Basket, which Irving Berlin wrote in the mid-1930s and Ella Fitzgerald recorded in the late 1950s:
A vigorous swing-style blowing session, Modern Life offers 10 tracks. They include faithful verse-and-all readings of George Gershwin’s He Loves and She Loves (a classy ballad) and Soon (a bright swinger), medium-tempo takes of I’ve Told Every Little Star and No Moon At All (two tunes with swing built in to them), a slow Calypso groove version of Tadd Dameron’s Casbah, and a closing duet on Billy Strayhorn’s A Flower Is A Lovesome Thing. Asherie’ss two originals — the riffy Blues For George and the bluesy tune One For V — fit right in with this focused program.
Throughout, Asherie plays with polish and class. However, it’s Allen, who has been plumbing this style for at least a dozen years more than the pianist, who expresses himself most strongly and personally, I find. His poise and invention on the very fast Trolley Song make his performance a true thing of beauty — old-fashioned or otherwise.
