After yesterday's post, I decided to spend the day listening to Ben Webster. In his prime, Webster had one of the biggest sound of any tenor saxophonist. And on ballads, it seemed as if he was weeping through his instrument. I love the short puffs of air he'd let out in the spaces on ballads, like a huge truck or bus releasing its air brakes. Here's some of what I was digging yesterday:
Here's Webster in Denmark in 1971 playing Some Other Spring backed by rhythm and strings...
Here's Webster with Art Tatum in 1956 on Gone With the Wind. Remember, you're listening to two of the greatest artists in jazz history playing together here...
Here's Webster playing In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning in 1959...
Here's Webster soloing behind Carmen McRae on Flamingo in 1958...
Here's Webster behind Kay Star on My Kind of Love in 1961...
Here's Webster behind Carol Sloane on When Your Lover Has Gone in 1963 live at Kings and Queens in Pawtucket, R.I....
Here's Webster soloing behind Billie Holiday in 1956 on Do Nothing Til You Hear From Me...
Here's Webster behind Donna Hightower in 1958 on Perfidia...
And here's Webster behind Jo Stafford on For You in 1960...
The last Dutch jazz pianist I turned you on to was Rob Madna. Today, I have another one for you: Frans Wieringa. As far as I can tell, he recorded only five or so albums, two of them with Ben Webster in 1969. The Webster albums are At Ease, recorded in Heemstede, Holland, in January on the Imperial label. The other was Blow, Ben Blow! for Prestige in October, also recorded in Holland.
Wieringa also recorded Jazz From Holland in 1968 on Dorplein,Well Organized Music/The Eminent Swing Combination in Hilversum in 1977 for Negram, The Million Dollar Sound of JVC in 1982 and A Tribute to North Sea Jazz Festival. I couldn't find much about Wieringa online, so hopefully my friends in the Netherlands will weigh in.
What I can offer you are clips:
Here's Wieringa on piano with Ben Webster on At Ease (the full album)...
Here, if you move the time bar to 38:02, you'll find Wieringa's four tracks from Blow Ben, Blow!—John Brown's Body, Work Song, The Preacher and Straight No Chaser...
And here's Wieringa playing a gig in Paterswolde, Holland, in 2006...
I loved interviewing pianist Mose Allison for The Wall Street Journal (here) and for JazzWax (here) in 2010. Mose was a singular artist with a wry sense of humor and a rich, home-grown keyboard style who understood rural wisdom, hard work and suffering. Mose relocated to New York from Mississippi in the mid-1950s as a jazz sideman. By the late '50s, he had parlayed his bluesy, jagged piano and clever, aw-shucks lyric-writing into a soft storm of rural wit, swaggering riffs and howling vocals. Prestige's Bob Weinstock got him and featured him playing and singing on Back Country Suite and Local Color. Both masterpieces were recorded in 1957. [Photo above and all other images of John Chin, right, and Richard Julian by Lauren Desberg]
In conversation, Mose was gentle, easygoing and slathered in Southern charm and understated hip pragmatism. Like Fats Waller, Count Basie, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk and Donald Fagen, among others, Mose was one of a kind, both as a songwriter and a jazz pianist. [Photo above of Mose Allison]
So imagine my delight when John Chin: Anything Mose! Featuring Richard Julian (Jinsy Music) crossed my desk. The album showcases John's Mose-inspired piano and Richard's guitar and Mose-ian vocals. But John wasn't satisfied to hold this project to a trio. He added horns: John Chin (p), Richard Julian (g,vcl), Kenyatta Beasley (tp), Stacy Dillard (ss, ts), Pete Rende (pump organ), Matt Pavolka (b) and Dan Rieser (d). To John's credit, it all works without ever leaving Moseville.
The tracks are Your Molecular Structure, Your Mind Is on Vacation, Smashed!, Stop This World, Middle Class White Boy, Parchman Farm, I Don't Worry About a Thing, Seventh Son, Tell Me Something, Monsters of the ID and Was. Ten of the 11 songs are by Mose, while Seventh Son is by Willie Dixon and was recorded by Mose.
John is an accomplished pianist who has recorded four albums and performs regularly at jazz clubs in Brooklyn, crossing bridges to Manhattan to perform at Carnegie Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Blue Note and other marquee clubs. Richard is a Brooklyn singer-songwriter and guitarist who has released six albums.
Knowing Mose, I love this album. John and Richard fully get Mose's art, attack and quiet hipster ethos. What always fascinated me about Mose is how he was able to coax barefoot wisdom and funky jazz to work together. Mose's music sounds simple but it's far from easy. You can't interpret his songs. You have to get into his space and yowl and rock.
Anything Mose! pays tribute to the Southern singer-songwriter and folk-funk pianist in all his Greenwich Village glory. Hearing this album takes you back to a time when artists and thinkers from around the country relocated to New York and converged in downtown clubs and coffee houses to express their regional differences and exceptionalism.
Like Mose, John and Richard understand what it means to be outsiders embraced by New York insiders who appreciate their scene. Mose would have dug Anything Mose! He would have listened, there'd be a summer pause and in that drawl of his, he'd say, "They're quite good, aren't they? Maybe I should think about taking a few nights off."
Mose Allison died in 2016.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find John Chin and Richard Julian's Anything Mose! (Jinsy Music) here.
Marc Myers writes regularly for The Wall Street Journal and is author of "Anatomy of a Song" (Grove) and "Why Jazz Happened." Founded in 2007, JazzWax is a three-time winner of the Jazz Journalists Association's best blog award.
