Having been away on a longish trip to Spain I arrived home to find a delightful slice of Irish jazz history awaiting me.
After the reissue last year of Louis Stewart’s wonderful 1977 solo album Out On His Own (previously reviewed on BSH), now comes another box of treasure from the musical archive of Gerald Davis, the founder of Ireland’s first jazz label, Livia Records. With the support of the Davis family, the record label has been reactivated by jazz aficionado Dermot Rogers and clearly he has been enjoying his explorations.
What is
thrilling about this second album, Some Other Blues, also recorded in 1977, is that it is not a reissue of a previous
record but a recording that has never been available before. And equally
exciting is that, as well as Louis Stewart, it features one of the few
recordings by another fine Irish jazz musician, pianist Noel Kelehan. Although
his first love was always jazz and he led trios, quartets, quintets and big
bands, Kelehan’s career took him into the Irish
national radio and TV broadcaster RTE where he was a highly regarded musician,
composer, arranger and conductor.
A Greek philosopher once said that ‘you can’t step in the same river twice’, arguing that life, time (and rivers) were always in flux and changing, but he hadn’t heard this record. As a young jazz fan in Dublin I heard these two musicians live in many different combinations and from the first few notes of the first track I was back there again. This is what the best jazz in Dublin in the 1970s sounded like. Superb musicians, enjoying playing together. Happy to play fast without giving the impression they were at the edge. Equally comfortable playing slow ballads and always with lyricism and feeling.
Most of the
tracks are up-tempo meaning they vary from fast to warp factor 5 and the notes
say that I’ll Remember April has a tempo of
285 bpm. I didn’t count them but I could hear each
note played perfectly. Their version of Singin' in the Rain would leave even
the fleet-footed Gene Kelly standing and tracks like You Stepped Out of a Dream
and Minority demonstrate the two musicians’ virtuosity.
It is good to
hear one of Kelehan’s own compositions, a slower tempo
ballad I Only Have Time to Say I Love You and with the Tadd Dameron tune If You
Could See me Now and the title track, Coltrane’s Some Other Blues, a rich diversity is added to the mix.
One of the excellent features of the albums issued by the (new) Livia records is that they are beautifully produced with highly informative booklets written by people with considerable jazz expertise. In this case Ronan Guilfoyle, an educator and bass player who played for a long period with Stewart and also with Noel Kelehan, describes the harmonic intricacies of particular tracks which illustrate Kelehan’s arranging abilities with chord-rich playing and multiple key changes and provide a perfect match to Stewart's effortless playing. For me his description of the musical techniques Kelehan and Stewart display certainly added to my enjoyment of the album.
As Guilfoyle writes ‘it is extraordinary that Some Other Blues has taken more than 46 years to see the light of day’. One can only wonder what other musical gems Livia Records are currently polishing up and I for one can’t wait! (definitely not for another 46 years, anyway). JC
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