SPOOKY JAZZ Vol. 2 / I’d Rather Be Burned as a Witch (Garrett-Dolin). My Man’s an Undertaker (Thomas Kirkland). Love is a Necessary Evil (Fisher-Segal). Hummin’ to Myself (Fain-Magidson-Siegel). Love, Your Spell is Everywhere (Transylvanian Lullaby) (Janis-Goulding-Morris). Oogie Boogie’s Song (Danny Elfman). You Hurt Me (Mertis & Darlynn John). Hard Hearted Hannah (Yellen-Bigelow-Bates-Ager). That Old Black Magic (Arlen-Mercer). Haunted House Blues (Cee Johnson). Shine On, Harvest Moon (Bayes-Norworth) / Hannah Gill, voc; Mike Davis, tp/tb; Gabe Terracciano, vln; Ricky Alexander, cl/sax; Justin Poindexter, gt/org; Gordon Webster, pno/org; Philip Ambuel, bs; Ben Zweig, dm / Turtle Bay Records, no number, also available for free streaming on Bandcamp except You Hurt Me which is on YouTube
I’ve come to resign myself to the fact that there are, and always were, real jazz singers who stretched their voices to phrase, bend notes and improvise like a jazz horn, and jazz vocalists who are first and foremost singers (often with good voices) who swing and know how to phrase in a jazz manner without stretching out. I much prefer the former, but except for Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and, to a lesser extent, Anita O’Day, most such singers live and work in the shadows because what they do is not only extremely difficult but unpopular. Thus the moderately swinging jazz vocalists get the limelight and the gigs because their musical concept is easier for audiences to grasp.
Fortunately, we occasionally get some really gifted singers in this latter category nowadays, among them England’s Beverly Bierne. Hannah Gill, who leads a band called The Hours which plays pop, rock and soul music, is clearly one of the more talented among them. Her greatest asset is an attractive, well-placed voice and an almost ferocious sense of jazz rhythm which allows her to interact with her musicians in a full-throated manner.
On this disc, a follow-up to an earlier Spooky Jazz album, is clearly not an all-Halloween album. Such songs as Hummin’ to Myself, That Old Black Magic and Shine On Harvest Moon clearly have nothing to do with ghosts or goblins. In fact, the first and last-named of these songs have their roots in the performance style of the Boswell Sisters, the first great female jazz group in history who encompassed both styles of jazz singing (but mostly the improvisatory type). In Harvest Moon, Gill even goes so far as to triple-track her voice to simulate the Boswells’ 1931 recording of this tune—although I bet you that less that 1% of her audience will probably know this because they don’t know who the Boswell Sisters were, either. I only wish she had revived one “Halloween swing tune” that Glenn Miller played on broadcasts but did not record, Swingin’ at the Séance by Al Avey, Eddie Stone (a hot guitarist-singer who played with the old Isham Jones band) and Ernie Carnice.
I don’t know if the band on this album is Gill’s regular working group or one just assembled for the recording—they’re not the same band on her first Spooky Jazz album—but they are one kick-ass group, equal to or better than Naomi’s Handsome Devils. Trumpeter/trombonist Mike Davis is the most live wire among them, but saxist Ricky Alexander isn’t far behind and as a whole they send you straight back to the best small swing era bands you can think of. Not a weak link among them, either: listen to bassist Philip Ambuel and pianist Gordon Webster’s solos on Love is a Necessary Evil. I was also happy to hear Justin Poindexter’s guitar solo on Hummin’ to Myself: he used an electric guitar, but more in the style of Charlie Christian than some hard rock screamer, but again on this track, it’s Ambuel’s solo that steals the show. Aside from Jimmy Blanton, no bassist in the swing era could have played something like this. Violinist Gabe Terracciano can and does play “hot,” but to be honest he’s not on the level of Joe Venuti, Stuff Smith or Stéphane Grappelli. In fact, the “Transylvanian lullaby” Love, Your Spell is Everywhere is the one tune on this album that doesn’t swing; it’s a real 1930s sort of European tune, although the second half of the recording really picks up with a hot clarinet duet and more driving hot trumpet from Davis, who also exhibits some really hot plunger work on Oogie Boogie, one of Danny Elfman’s better songs from The Nightmare Before Christmas, written in a Cab Calloway sort of groove. (Sorry, but I’m a HUGE Danny Elfman fan. That man has musical talent coming out of his ears.) In the last third of this song, the drummer and clarinetist give us a brief Sing, Sing, Sing touch as the band suddenly goes into double time.
Although Gill is American—she was born in Maryland in 1995—some of her vowels sound more British (or perhaps Canadian) than American. “Arctic,” for instance, comes out as “Ok-tic,” and “elevator” comes out as “elevatah.”
Oddly, You Hurt Me, an excellent blues song by Mertis & Darlynn John, came to my inbox as part of the download of this album but is NOT on the LP being issued. Apparently, it was a “single” (which really means nothing nowadays since although there are vinyl LPs there are no longer vinyl 45s) issued just prior to the album. This one has more of a late-1940s R&B sound to it, but it’s a good tune and Hannah and her band play the crap out of it.
Hard Hearted Hannah was, of course, a hit record circa 1945 for Ray McKinley’s orchestra. It’s one of those songs I love because it’s one of those “anti-love songs” that don’t get performed much nowadays, about a woman so cold that she is caught “pourin’ water on a drownin’ man.” Black Magic is a nice swinger but, compared to several of the other tunes on this disc, a surprisingly straightforward and unimaginative arrangement, saved by the chase chorus between Alexander and Davis. Haunted House Blues is a tune by the little-known Cee Pee Johnson, a drummer-singer who worked with pianist Teddy Buckner, saxist Jack McVea and the well-known duo of Slim (Gaillard) and Slam (Stewart).
The record then wraps up with Gill’s Boswells tribute, Shine On, Harvest Moon, updated a bit, of course, with the bluesy electric guitar in the intro and first chorus. The only thing Gill left out of her arrangement was the double-time improvisation in the final chorus; otherwise, it’s a really nice tribute to Connie, Vet and Martha, the unsung early queens of jazz female group singing.
This is yet another of those rarities, a really fun jazz recording that’s also real jazz and not some ersatz “ooh look at us we’re swinging, we think” kind of group. Spooky Jazz 2 is a first-class production in every sense of the word, but I’d recommend that you get it as a download and burn it to CD, adding You Hurt Me.
—© 2024 Lynn René Bayley
Follow me on Facebook (as Monique Musique)
Check out the books on my blog…they’re worth reading, trust me!