Allen Toussaint "The Bright Mississippi" (4.5*)

Given the likelihood that the natural move when looking at an Allen Toussaint set exploring his influences would be to place the man in a Crescent City studio with an outfit drawn from New Orleans’ finest instrumentalists it makes sense, at least from where I’m sitting, for producer Joe Henry to head out of town and cut the album with a group of highly rated New York session players and guest artists.

The Bright Mississippi isn’t Toussaint’s first excursion into the world of jazz, but given the limited distribution of 2005’s Going Places, released on a small label run by his son, it might as well be. It also acts as the follow-up to Toussaint's high-profile 2006 album with Elvis Costello, The River in Reverse (also produced by Joe Henry). That time they used Costello’s Imposters alongside an array of New Orleans instrumentalists, but here there’s a horn section that approximates modern jazz royalty (trumpeter Nicholas Payton, whose father played bass on Lee Dorsey’s Working In A Coal Mine and clarinetist Don Byron), a stellar rhythm section (David Pilch on upright bass and Jay Bellerose, drums) with Marc Ribot, in all-acoustic mode on guitar. With Toussaint on piano and guest appearances from pianist Brad Mehldau and saxophonist Joshua Redman that’s the instrumental lineup sorted.

As far as the material is concerned we’re looking at covers of classic pieces by Jelly Roll Morton (Winin' Boy Blues), Sidney Bechet (Egyptian Fantasy), Louis Armstrong (King Oliver’s West End Blues), Duke Ellington (Day Dream and Solitude), Django Reinhardt (Blue Drag), Thelonious Monk (The Bright Mississippi) alongside the traditional St. James Infirmary and Just A Closer Walk With Thee and Leonard Feather’s Long, Long Journey.

Sidney Bechet’s Egyptian Fantasy comes across as a brassy jazz funeral march, Byron's clarinet and Payton’s trumpet ragging around each other before a Toussaint piano solo over a barely audible tambourine in the background. Dear Old Southland riffs off Summertime throughout, opening with Payton playing a Dixie lament over Toussaint’s piano before another unaccompanied piano solo with Payton coming back soft and eloquent to round off an impressive six plus minutes.

The rolling piano in St. James Infirmary swings over Piltch's upright bass, Ribot's acoustic guitar and Bellerose's percussive punctuation, Ribot gets a solo and there’s an immaculately executed call and response to and fro around the main theme as Toussaint’s piano prodding Ribot's guitar on the way out.

Payton's back in the foreground for Singin’ the Blues with the rhythm section right on his heels and Toussaint comping along behind in a version that could have come straight out of Preservation Hall, and Jelly Roll Morton’s Winin’ Boy Blues is reworked as a piano duet with Brad Mehldau joining Toussaint behind the ivories.

Mention King Oliver’s West End Blues to anyone who knows their traditional jazz and the immediate response will probably mention Louis Armstrong and, predictably, Payton’s trumpet brings New Orleans’ most famous musical ambassador to mind from the opening five-note theme. Toussaint’s piano underpins the whole exercise and Ribot’s guitar is crisp and concise, as it is on Blue Drag, which, of course, it should on a Django Reinhardt number.

Byron’s clarinet takes the lead on the traditional Just a Closer Walk with Thee, with just a hint of playfulness as the stride piano plays off the gospel patterns as the clarinet loops back and forth across the top.

Thelonious Monk’s Bright Mississippi gets a down home treatment, with a touch of funk in the second-line drum groove and a buoyant strut in the horn arrangement. There’s none of that in Joshua Redman’s tenor sax on Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s Day Dream, which gets the three-in-the-morning smoke-filled night club yearning treatment as Toussaint and Redman play off each other.

The album’s only vocal arrives in Leonard Feather’s Long, Long Journey, a weary blues with muted trumpet over a brushed snare drum stroll with slide guitar, subtle and understated and eases gently into Duke Ellington’s Solitude, a late night duet involving Ribot’s guitar and Toussaint’s piano picking their way around the theme in five and a half minutes of stop-start interplay. It makes for an elegant finale to an exceptional outing.

Cut live in the studio over four days (and it definitely sounds that way) The Bright Mississippi delivers a neat and innovative exploration of modern and traditional jazz elements that casts a glance back to the music’s roots and still sounds contemporary, delivers soul with elegance, and matches a good time feel with supper club sophistication. It’s a class effort that underlines the riches of the New Orleans tradition by taking the material, filtering it through one of the city’s musical giants and rolling it out through an instrumental outfit familiar with the feel but not bound by the musical geography.

It’s an exercise one might definitely be tempted to repeat (and my music collection could definitely handle further explorations of the same themes in a similar manner) though one suspects lightning might not manage to repeat the strike location.

And if it doesn’t, this will do quite nicely, thank you...

Irma Thomas "Simply Grand" (4*)

There are some things that are best kept simple.

When, for example, I have the opportunity to open a really good bottle of red wine I’m inclined to line it up beside a sizeable chunk of Tasmanian eye fillet or rib on the bone, thoroughly sealed on both sides and finished in the oven. When that’s done, deglaze the pan juices with water and a tad of the red (I’m not in the habit of overdoing the sauce when I’m looking at a $50 plus Halliday 95 or 96 pointer) and serve with some mashed potato and steamed broccoli or zucchini. It’s something that allows you to enjoy the complexities of the wine and the fall apart tenderness of the beef without having too many other factors getting in the way.

Given Irma Thomas’ status as arguably the greatest of the female R&B and soul voices to come out of New Orleans you might be tempted to surround her with upbeat fonk, heavy on the horns and it would probably come out OK. Thomas, however, always comes across as a little understated, medium rare as opposed to well done to continue the steak analogy, and those vocal tones work best, for mine, over a minimalist, uncluttered backing.

Here, the concept is straightforward. Take Irma, give her some ballads and set her beside a piano, bass and drums trio and let things run their course. This could have worked pretty well with any one of the ivory-tinklers on display here, but rather than sticking with one player they’ve recruited the pick of the New Orleans piano practitioners (Henry Butler, Dr. John, Jon Cleary, Tom McDermott, David Egan, Ellis Marsalis, Davell Crawford and Marcia Ball) and a couple of notable ring-ins (Norah Jones, John Medeski, Randy Newman) and only one notable absence (Allen Toussaint).

John Fogerty’s River Is Waiting with Henry Butler on piano and a gospel trio in the background is straight out of church, which the following track, If I Had Any Sense I'd Go Back Home, a Louis Jordan cover, isn’t as Irma and Dr John give the lyric a resigned reading. Jon Cleary’s the guest pianist on Too Much Thinking as Irma addresses the problems you have when you’re too busy to worry about minor considerations like rent, bills and all those other things you can’t do anything about.

It’s back to Louis Jordan territory for Early in the Morning with Tom McDermott looking after the accompaniment on a track that lacks the fire of some other readings. It’s one that may be getting the shuffle treatment when it turns up by itself a a little further down the track. I’m not entirely convinced by the Burt Bacharach co-write What Can I Do either.

Lil' Band O' Gold‘s David Egan provides Underground Stream and looks after the keyboard duties on a gospel call for regeneration, complete with choir, and the combination works better than the two tracks that preceded it. One that’ll work its way into myTop 1500, and if I was still doing the radio bit it’d be getting a regular spot on the airwaves.

Norah Jones takes over the keyboard for Thinking About You, which is a little restrained after the preceding track. Better, and more assertive is Dr John’s contribution to Be You, a track he co-wrote with the great Doc Pomus, originally intended for Etta James. Dr. John played on Irma’s first recording session (You Can Have My Husband But Don't Mess with My Man) back in 1959 and his work here delivers a playfully funky counterpoint to a playful shimmying vocal.

This Bitter Earth was a hit for Dinah Washington some fifty-plus years ago, and gets a smoky nightclub style treatment here with elegant but quite restrained backing from Ellis Marsalis and delicate upright bass and hi-hat action on the drums, and it’s a similar story when David Torkanowsky returns for Cold Rain (he’d provided the piano part for the Bacharach number) the combination works much better than it did earlier as Irma meditates on the cleansing that follows a storm.

Allen Toussaint wrote Somebody Told You and Irma recorded it way back in 1962, but this time it’s John Medeski rather than Toussaint providing the backing while Thomas testifies. Overrated features Davell Crawford on an R&B ballad that’s rather soft around the edges and in danger of attracting smart-arsed references to the title. Along with What Can I Do, it’s one of the weaker tracks on an album that’s pretty consistent otherwise. There’s a more spartan turn around the eighty-eights from Marcia Ball on Don Nix’s Same Old Blues, though there’s a gospelly twist there that definitely ain’t the same old barrelhouse variety.

But the album’s highlight comes when Randy Newman slips onto the stool in front of the keyboard for I Think It's Going to Rain Today. Newman’s bleak vision, with hope and desolation presented as opposite sides of the same coin makes for a moving meditation in the aftermath of a disaster, and Thomas’ understated vocal delivers a poignant combination of heartbreak and vulnerable dignity. Stunning.

And, when you look at the title, the title says it all. Simple, slightly modified to fit grammatical requirements and grand, as in piano, and also as in the dictionary definitions.

Take your pick from:
magnificent and imposing in appearance, size, or style
of high rank and with an appearance and manner appropriate to it
used … to suggest size or splendour
of the highest rank
very good or enjoyable; excellent
all of which are taken from the Dictionary app on my Mac (which, in turn, is taken from the New Oxford American Dictionary, so we're talking authoritative here, folks.

Authoritative. That's another descriptor that fits like a glove...

Frankie Miller "Frankie Miller… That’s Who!" (4*)

At $25.99 for 87 tracks that’d be spread over four CDs if you bought a hard copy Frankie Miller… That’s Who! comes across as pretty reasonable value if you’re familiar with the gravel voiced Scot’s work and need to acquire a fair chunk of his back catalogue for a reasonable price.

For the majority of the population, however, it’ll probably be a case of Frankie Who? unless you’ve got something more than vague memories of Darlin’ or one of the other singles that garnered a little airplay for the bowler-hatted one back in the late seventies.

If you’re unfamiliar with the man and his work something in the way of a back story might be appropriate, particularly because the four disks under review represent a fair chunk of his recorded output.

Born in Glasgow in 1949, Miller’s musical tastes were shaped by his mother, a Ray Charles fan, and two older sisters who were into Little Richard and Elvis Presley. Mum and Dad chipped in for a guitar, and by the time he was nine Miller was writing songs (I Can't Change It, written when he was twelve, was recorded by Ray Charles).

By the time he’d hit his teens he was singing professionally, and relocated to London in 1971 to work with ex-Procol Harum guitarist Robin Trower, Glasgow bandmate, bass player and vocalist James Dewar and ex-Jethro Tull drummer Clive Bunker in an outfit called Jude that attracted a fair degree of attention without producing anything in the way of a recording before breaking up in the first quarter of 1972.

That attention they’d attracted, however, was enough to secure a record deal with Chrysalis Records, and Miller cut his first album Once in a Blue Moon under the supervision of producer Dave Robinson (later head honcho of Stiff Records)  with backing from pub rock outfit Brinsley Schwarz (who, of course, included Nick Lowe as well as Brinsley Schwarz and Bob Andrews, who ended up backing Graham Parker in The Rumour, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.

Once in a Blue Moon didn’t do so well, but did enough to have Miller jetting to New Orleans to cut his second album with Allen Toussaint, who allegedly tagged Miller as the most soulful singer he's ever heard, in 1974. High Life was allegedly remixed and released by the record label without Miller or Toussaint’s consent, which accounts for the apparent duplication of some tracks on this set, which includes original mix, available on official release for the first time.

The Toussaint collaboration was, however, a one-off and for his third album Miller was off to San Francisco to work with Elliot Mazer, whose production credits include Neil Young’s Harvest. Miller mightn’t have been chalking up big sales but influential people were sitting up and taking notice. The Rock took its name from Alcatraz, visible from the studio window, and marked the debut of The Frankie Miller Band, which included guitarist Henry McCullough (ex-Eire Apparent, Joe Cocker’s Grease Band, Spooky Tooth and Paul McCartney's Wings), bassist Chrissie Stewart, drummer Stu Perry and Mick “Wynder K. Frog” Weaver on keyboards.

From there it was back to London to work with Chris Thomas on 1977‘s Full House, which produced a minor chart single in Be Good To Yourself and a cover of John Lennon’s Jealous Guy. A lengthy US tour followed, and April 1978 saw Miller recording with a new band and Aerosmith producer Jack Douglas at the Record Plant in New York. The result was Double Trouble, cut with drummer BJ Wilson (Procol Harum), Chrissie Stewart on bass, Ray Russell on guitar, Chris Mercer and Martin Drover on horns and Paul Carrack on keys.

Carrack stayed on board for album #6, Falling in Love, which delivered a UK Top Ten single in the form of Darlin', but as far as chart action was concerned that was, more or less, it, at least as far as material labelled as Frankie Miller was concerned. When I'm Away From You (the follow-up to Darlin’) might have failed to repeat the success but scored in the US Country charts for The Bellamy Brothers a few years down the track.

By this stage Miller was based in Nashville, where the final Chrysalis album Easy Money was recorded with a team of crack Music City session players and signalled a move into writing that yielded successful covers by, among others, The Bellamy Brothers, Johnny Cash, Kim Carnes, Joe Cocker, Etta James, Waylon Jennings, Roy Orbison, The Osmonds, Bob Seger, Rod Stewart,   Bonnie Tyler,  Joe Walsh and The Eagles.

After Easy Money, a switch from Chrysalis to Capitol Records saw an eighth album (Standing on the Edge) recorded at Muscle Shoals in Alabama, with legendary Muscle Shoals Rhythm section and Dancing in the Rain recorded in New York with several collaborations with Jeff Barry, after a plan to re-record the Crystals’ Da Doo Ron Ron fell through.

Miller continued writing and recording through the eighties, with soundtrack credits on a number of movies and television series and was in the process of putting a new touring band together in New York with Joe Walsh (The Eagles), pianist Nicky Hopkins and drummer Ian Wallace when he suffered a massive brain haemorrhage and spent five months in a coma, followed by a lengthy spell of rehabilitation which explains the relative silence from a formerly prolific writer and performer.

So that’s the Frankie Who? question answered. What about the seven albums (eight counting the original mix of High Life)?


Forty years on, Once In A Blue Moon rocks along nicely, Brinsley Schwarz bubbling away in the background and Miller in fine voice from the opening You Don't Need To Laugh through to the wry, slinky reading of I'm Ready that concludes proceedings, with plenty of interest in between. A particularly tasty rendition of Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues is probably the pick of ‘em, but there’s not a dud in sight.

The two versions of High Life have different running orders, and Chrysalis appears to have played around with some of the titles but both takes on Play Something Sweet (Brickyard Blues), Trouble, With You In Mind, Just A Song and With You in Mind demonstrate an impressive match of soulful Scot and New Orleans funk and, again, there’s not a dud in sight. Actually, running through the two versions gives you a chance to hear some impressive material twice.

The recording venue changed to San Francisco for the Elliot Mazer-produced The Rock, with a title track musing on Miller’s likelihood of ending up somewhere like Alcatraz if he didn’t have something like his music to channel his energies into. Other highlights include A Fool In Love, Ain’t Got No Money and my personal favourite Drunken Nights in the City (not that I know anything about such matters).

The content up to this point fills two CDs in the hard copy version and the third kicks off with the 1976 single Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever b/w (that’s backed with for you young ‘uns who weren’t around for two-sided vinyl 45s) I'm Old Enough.

1977’s Full House kicks off in fine style with the magnificent Be Good To Yourself, follows it with a romp through The Doodle Song, which isn’t about what you might think, and then delivers a great reading of John Lennon’s Jealous Guy. The themes from those three tracks continue through Love Letters, Take Good Care of Yourself and (I'll Never) Live in Vain with a sidetrack Down the Honky Tonk when medication is required to ease the heartache.

Things start to fall away slightly as Double Trouble veers off towards the rock end of the spectrum, with heavier riffs. No decline in the vocals, but the material isn’t (IMHO, mileages may vary) as strong as the earlier efforts. Flashier presentation but less substance, though the album finishes on a strong note with a rousing Goodnight Sweetheart.

Falling In Love starts more strongly with When I'm Away From You, contains Darlin' (probably his best known track) but there’s a fairly ordinary reading of Bob Marley’s  Is This Love before Falling In Love With You rolls along to square up the ledger. Much of the intervening material, and the run through from Falling to the end of the album is solid, mainstream-friendly rock that doesn’t have a whole lot to distinguish it from its late seventies peers apart from the Miller tonsils.

That’s largely true of 1980s Easy Money, though the final album in the set does have its share of highlights including Why Don't You Spend The Night, Heartbreak Radio and No Chance, alongside a vigorous reading of the old Jo Jo Zep classic So Young, So Young. A slightly over the top take on Randy Newman’s Sail Away (from a 1977 EP) winds things up.

As far as the consumer goes, while the collection isn’t consistent there’s a definite economic argument in favour of $25.99 rather than a couple of $16.90’s (High Life and Once in a Blue Moon are highly recommended, and you really should take a look at Full House). The audio has been remixed for the collection, which is another argument for bulk buying and you’ll end up with close to the whole box and dice from the pub rock that kicked his career off through the harder-edged rock in the middle to the AOR friendly relatively slick stuff at the end.

And we are, after all, talking about the bloke Rod Stewart described as The only white guy that’s ever brought a tear to my eye.