(Reprinted from the October 2023 issue of New York City Jazz Record)
The Ear Inn occupies the street-level floor of a house on Spring Street, just west of Soho, a few blocks in from the Hudson River. Built in 1770 for James Brown, an African-American aide to George Washington, the colonial-era building has been in constant service to the drinking public for more than 250 years, according to its website. The Ear Inn also serves the listening public, though this history is less readily available, which is why Live at the Ear Inn (Arbor Records) by trumpeter Jon-Erik Kellso and his octet The EarRegulars deserves attention.
For the last 16 years the horn-based group has held a Sunday-evening residency at the Inn, playing without rehearsal through the jazz timeline, from traditional New Orleans and the blues to swing and contemporary. At just seven titles, the live recording captures only a sliver of this output, almost all of it instrumentals. (Notably, several of the selections first emerged as early vocal jazz tunes—Donald Heywood/Will Marion Cook’s “I’m Coming Virginia”, popularized by Ethel Waters in 1926, for example, and Victor Herbert/Al Dubin’s “Indian Summer”, a hit for Tom Dorsey in 1939). But on the album’s final track the group does show off its chops backing a singer: Catherine Russell joins them on “Back O’ Town Blues”, written by her father, Luis Russell, and Louis Armstrong. This tune, first recorded during World War II, later appeared as the B side to the bandleader’s seminal recording of “Mack the Knife” (pre-Bobby Darin). Listening to Russell interpret her father’s work today, in a voice so evocative of that time, it’s easy to imagine the storied room filled with peoples of a bygone era. Russell will likewise conjure other historical figures when she hosts Family Concert: What Is New Orleans Jazz? at JALC on Oct. 21.
Back in 2007, singer/guitarist Allan Harris released Nat King Cole: Long Live The King (Love Productions), a recording of his earlier Kennedy Center tribute to the master crooner. Many studio releases and 16 years on, Harris drops another club recording with Live at Blue Llama, a collaboration between the Ann Arbor jazz venue by that name and Harris’ own production company, recorded in January of this year. Harris delivers a well-balanced set here: In and among audience-pleasers like “Sunny” and “The Very Thought Of You” are some equally engaging Harris originals, like his gritty, guitar-riffed “Black Coffee Blues” and the mildly swinging, “Shimmering Deep Blue Sea”. Though Harris isn’t playing any sets this month, you can catch him as he finishes up a run of his off-B’way show Cross That River, a modern jazz song cycle about black cowboys in the mid-19th century, at 59E59 Theater through Oct. 8.
Harris’ expert skillset as a musician begs comparisons with that of singer/guitarist George Benson, one of the biggest crossover vocal jazz artists of all time. Benson, who dominated the pop charts in the 1970s-80s (most often produced by vocal jazz visionary Tommy LiPuma), has headlined at the Montreux Jazz Festival more frequently than all but a handful of jazz artists. This past summer, Montreux Sounds/Mercury Studios relaunched George Benson: Live at Montreux 1986, previously a DVD of the star’s mid-career Festival performance, now in disc format. On the double-CD recording Benson sings many of his hits from the day like “On Broadway” and “Turn Your Love Around” and “The Greatest Love Of All”, his casual insertion of scats and other vocal improvisations still surprising. In live performance he digs even deeper into his jazz vocabulary, dropping all pop idioms to swing relentlessly on, for instance, “Beyond the Sea” (post-Bobby Darin) or to growl and slide spontaneously in a way that he didn’t in the studio. But not all of his charting tunes made the cut: You won’t hear “Breezin’” or “This Masquerade” or “Give Me The Night” on this one.
More live gigs: Samara Joy returns to JALC to headline her first Rose Theater show on Oct. 6-7. As a lead-up, she recently launched the video of her self-produced new single “Tight", a driving version of the Betty Carter original. Monk Competition finalist Lucy Yeghiazaryan also plays JALC this month, offering her tribute to NEA Jazz Master Shirley Horn on Oct. 2. And Arts for Art, the creative music bellwether, will present singer Ellen Christi on Oct. 7 and vocalist/percussionist Anaïs Maviel on Oct. 9 as part of its free outdoor InGarden 2023 series.