KSTV: Playback session - Barney Kessel's "Some Like it Hot" - March 11

Dave Archer (guitar); Alec Harper (tenor sax/clarinet); Deschanel Gordon (piano); Ferg Ireland (bass); Will Cleasby (drums).

(Screenshots by Ken Drew).

Another album from that magical year 1959. To think, back then, I took it all for granted thinking that every year would be the same or maybe even better. It wasn't better, nor was it worse, just different.

Tonight's players did a magnificent job of recreating music that was recorded in the fifties and inspired by a film with a story-line set in the twenties. That they managed to do this without sounding either dated or out of context with the era was to their immense credit.

Archer managed to avoid direct comparision by playing amplified acoustic as opposed to the Gibson jazz guitar that Barney would have used thus allowing him to put  his own fingers in the master's gloves. His solos with only Ireland alongside were as good as it gets - Stairway to the Stars and I'm Thru With Love two beautiful songs from the film and that era.

Harper, like Art Pepper on the original, plays clarinet as good as any doubler does but it was his tenor playing that really ticked the boxes. Amazingly, he blew some solos that Johnny Griffin or Lockjaw or maybe even Sonny would have been proud of yet still managed to play within the rhythmic pulse of say Bud Freeman or Eddie Miller!

None of the players would have been born when the film was made, particularly so Gordon (no relation to Joe Gordon who played trumpet on the original recording) whose solo on Sweet Georgia Brown really cracked it. Interesting that just about everybody, anywhere and everywhere invariably finishes their solo, no matter how complex, with the same descending phrase - it's a sort of rite of passage as well as an obvious cue.

The show opened up with Sweet Sue with Harper on clarinet or, as one of the pundits put it, "The Gloomstick" - unfair. He switched to tenor for Runnin' Wild as well as the title track from the film - Some Like it Hot.

The set finished with By the Beautiful Sea and a drum solo from Cleasby.

A great film, a great album and a great playback from a great venue which begs the question. When things get back to a kind of normality will Smitty's be operating as a bar and venue again?

Lance.

PS: Note I never mentioned Marilyn Monroe - I must be getting old!