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Mose Allison at Snug Harbor, New Orleans |
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Written by Brooks Peterson
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Saturday, 18 March 2006 |
 Photo by Brooks Peterson
On March 12, 2006 I had a chance to see Mose Allison in New Orleans at
the Snug Harbor jazz club. You
can do the same at the Artist's Quarter in Downtown St. Paul on June
16-17, 2006. The show I saw featured Mr. Allison himself on piano and
vocals, Bill Huntington on bass and the attention-grabbing Johnny
Vidacovich on drums.
Snug Harbor is indeed a snug and intimate little New Orleans jazz club
that seats about 60 max on the lower level (with a balcony above).
There were around 40 in the audience that night. The club is strict but
friendly in their policy against photos and recordings, which I
discovered only after I’d taken all my photos, so enjoy the above
snapshot.
So what do you get when you decide to spend your evening out seeing
Mose Allison perform? You get “original”. Mose Allison is a prolific
songwriter. He’s recorded more than 30 albums from 1957 to today and
has reportedly influenced the Rolling Stones and the Who, among other
big names. His website (www.moseallison.com) lists 145 original tunes.
At the time I’m writing this, he’s booked up through September 2006 on
coast-to-coast and Canadian gigs.
The 79 year-old pianist-vocalist-songwriter walked up and took the
stage just a moment after his band, took off his casual fleece jacket,
sat down and punched out 17 original songs and six covers in a
70-minute set that included two encores (and we asked for them!). At 18
bucks admission, that’s just over 78 cents a song (drinks sold
separately).
 Photo by Brooks Peterson
Johnny Vidacovich, the drummer,
captured nearly my full attention for
nearly all 23 songs. In the theater sense of “focus”, and maybe
musically too, he stole the show and you’ll be lucky if he’s on the gig
at the Artist’s Quarter. There are few fat drummers and Mr. Vidacovich
is skinny among them. With none of the goofball aspect, he holds a
certain physical likeness to Don Knotts but with a close-shaved head.
The man has muscled biceps that look about the diameter of beer cans
and it’s obvious this comes from whaling away at his drum kit. I was
amazed at how he followed the intricate changes and nailed the tunes.
Zow! This wasn’t predictable music a mediocre drummer could just tink
away to all night. Mr. Vidacovich was playing on the house kit too, not
his own, but he was precise and strong.
If you watch jazz, you know how the musicians often contort their faces
or smile, roll their heads back or generally bliss out, lost in the
music. I love watching those trances. Jazz musicians are lucky! How
often can you do that in your non-musical profession? I bet you can’t
get away with making blissed-out faces like that during your workday in
a corporate environment. The drummer, Mr. Vidacovich, glued his Don
Knotts eyes on Mose Allison and went into his playing trance, sometimes
even half standing for quick moments, other times looking directly at
-but about four miles beyond- the audience, and always driving that
drum set with four limbs a-bopping. When he wasn’t kicking the hi-hat
or the bass his feet still kept moving. One person I was with thought
he was too loud and she was probably right. He was indeed quite loud,
but I am utterly entranced by watching humans do things like that to
instruments and it must reassure a singer too, to be backed by a solid
drummer like Mr. Vidacovich. The bass player was solid and a fast
reader but it’s obvious that Mr. Vidacovich had rehearsed and has
extremely good ears.
 Photo by Brooks Peterson
Mr. Allison writes charming lyrics that tickle the audience such as
“...the world is your rubber duckie”, which follows the above
referenced lines from “How does it Feel?”. The tune “Middle Class White
Boy” had the audience chuckling and probably always does, but the best
response of the night happened to be to “Do Nothing ‘til You Hear From
Me”, probably because of the sheer charm of the singer. He gingerly
sips a single whiskey throughout the set. For the first 12 songs he
said nothing but “Thank you.” before quickly moving to the next song.
Then he said “Thank you and we’d appreciate if the smokers can hold off
for about 30 minutes.” For the non-originals, he simply tells who wrote
it and who sang it and then goes straight into playing it.
His charm and communication with the audience come from the lyrics
themselves and from the way he sings them. He smiles and his eyes
crinkle and he sings as though he’s singing to music with earphones on.
I mean that only positively and therein lies the charm. He certainly
doesn’t sing off key, and he’s certainly a talented player, but his
vocal range stays within a short zone. What’s charming about hearing
Mose Allison singing his own original material the way he does, is that
he tosses out lyrics that you fully assume someone like Lyle Lovett
will buy and make famous, if he hasn’t already. And for all I know he
probably has. So go see Mose Allison when he comes to the Artist’s
Quarter... you’ll have a rubber duckie of a night.
-by Brooks Peterson (
www.BrooksPeterson.com)
Song list at the Snug Harbor Club in New Orleans on 3/12/06:
- Instrumental
- The More You Get
- City Home
- If You’re Goin’ to the City
- Tell Me Something
- Hey Good Lookin’
- Trouble in Mind by Richard M. Jones
- I Feel So Good
- Do Nothing ‘til You Hear From Me
- The Seventh Son
- Hello There Universe
- Your Mind is on Vacation
- Getting There
- That's The Stuff You Gotta Watch (Buddy Johnson Band hit, sung by
Ella
Johnson)
- Who’s Loving You Tonight? (Robert Lockwood)
- How Does it Feel
- What Do You Do After...
- Middle Class White Boy
- You Can’t Push People Around
- Mockingbird
- You Can Count on Me
- This Ain’t Me
- Baby Please Don’t Go
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 Monday, 13 October 2008
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