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Wild man on the loose: Mose Allison |
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Written by Don Berryman
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Monday, 13 September 2004 |
 In 1974 a friend of mine gave me a record saying “this sounds like the kind of stuff you would like.” That album was “Mose Allison: a Retrospective” and she was dead right. I fell in love with that sound right away. He had a voice drenched in the blues combined with impeccable jazz chops on the piano. That was 30 years ago and he has continued to write and perform his own songs and put his stylistic stamp on classics like “Seventh Son” by Willie Dixon. He is simultaneously a down home Mississippi Bluesman and a urbane jazz hipster. In his half a century in the profession he has recorded albums for Prestige, Columbia, Atlantic, and Bluenote records.
Allison writes songs full of wit and wry observations, with lines like “You say you're jogging but I call it running arround” and “I'm just a middleaged white boy, just trying yo have some fun” His songs have been recorded by many blues, jazz and rock artists including the Who, Charlie Musselwhite, Bonnie Raitt, Karyn Allyson, Eric Clapton, Johnny Winter, Elvis Costello, Leon Russel, Hot Tuna, Georgie Fame, John Mayal, Jeff Beck and Van Morrison (who recorded a tribute album: “Tell Me Something: The Songs of Mose Allison” with nothing but Mose Allison tunes).
Pete Townsend said of Mose “... his voice was so right that I felt it was the voice of a gentle giant. The man, the musician, with the strength to change the world, but the humility and the character to stand alone, live his own life and await his natural time.”
Come and catch that 'gentle giant' himself when he tours. |
Saturday, 20 March 2010
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