Welcome to Issue #48
of FloridaCajunZydeco.com Update!
for January 2017
This newsletter showcases dance events from the FloridaCajunZydeco.com website and publishes articles not on the website pages. On Tuesday, Jan. 3 and Jan. 17 join us for Cajun Zydeco Dance in Largo
at Sweet Island Vibes. Great song list on tap. No cover charge, but please drop a couple bucks in the deejay's tip bowl (it goes to maintain the sound system). Please patronize the restaurant too. It's the nicest place we've been, so let's support the hard working folks who run the restaurant. In August Hurricane Hermine beseiged Florida and forced the cancellation of several performances for Marcia Ball including the Daytona Blues Festival. You can catch Marcia Ball this month
in Bradenton, Boca Raton and Miami. Weather conditions should be just about perfect this time around. FloridaCajunZydeco.com has listings for the major 2017 festivals. All of the major Cajun-Zydeco festivals in the United States are listed, including our own Pompano Beach fest, CrawDebauchery 2017
on April 1 & 2. About a month ago, three major music artists passed away in the same week: Leon Russell, Leonard Cohen and Mose Allison. The feature article this month is on Mississippi blues man MOSE ALLISON, and his surprising influence on popular music --- and rock music in particular. I didn't write the story. Mose and a bunch of bright music reviewers did. I just rearranged all of their ideas into one story you are sure to enjoy, even if you're not familiar with the artist. Most of Mose Allison's contributions to the article --- are easy to find. If you haven't visited
FloridaCajunZydeco.com
website, please do so. It has a new fluid width format which fills your browser window with content for easy reading regardless of whether you are viewing it on a desktop computer, tablet or mobile phone. We're on Facebook in Groups (Florida Cajun Zydeco Dancers) and with our own Facebook Page (Florida Cajun Zydeco). Check us out and "Like" us to see the posts and reminders throughout the week. This is a good way to get your Cajun and zydeco fix between newsletters. FloridaCajunZydeco.com
loves to travel — in your pocket on your smart phone. Check the website for dance information wherever your travels take you. Regards, Jim Hance
Publisher, FloridaCajunZydeco.com
Tues. Jan. 3 and 17 --- Cajun Zydeco Dance in Largo
6:00 to 9:30 p.m. at Sweet Island Vibes,
351 West Bay Drive, Largo 33770. Phone 727-240-4420. Dance to the music of your favorite Cajun and zydeco artists and then some. About every tenth song is a waltz, and I will play a classic slow country waltz that will definitely turn some heads and move some feet. Last dance we had a few tunes from Lynn August, and we can't leave him out of the playlist this week. Maybe we'll play tunes by Marcia Ball, Tab Benoit, Dwayne Dopsie, Easy Street Bayou and BeauSoleil as they will all be in Florida over the next few weeks. Lots of Chris Ardoin, Horace Trahan, Rosie Ledet, Steve Riley and Chubby Carrier, of course! No cover charge. Please patronize the restaurant, and drop a couple bucks in the bowl for the DJ (the money goes to maintain the sound system). Find the restaurant on the corner of 4th. Plenty of free parking nearby if the lot
is full (small lot). The menu for the restaurant is at http://sweetislandvibes.com/
Marcia Ball in Florida
Thurs. Jan. 5, 2017 --- Marcia Ball in Boca Raton
The Funky Biscuit, 303 SE Mizner Blvd., Royal Palm Place, Boca Raton, FL 33432 Website: funkybiscuit.com
"Marcia Ball’s rollicking roadhouse rave-ups and soulful Gulf Coast R&B, her barrelhouse playing and her feel-good party tunes are iconic." -- USA Today
"A joyful musical tour of the territory between New Orleans and Austin. Ball’s voice can break your heart with a ballad or break your back with a rocker. -- Boston Herald
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Fri. Jan. 13, 2017 --- Marcia Ball in Bradenton
8 p.m. at Ace’s Live Music, 4343 Palma Sola Blvd., Bradenton, FL 34209. Phone 941-795-3886. Pre-sale tickets limited time only: $30. Adv. Tickets $35; at the door if available $40. Ace's is a non-smoking venue.
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Sat. Jan. 14, 2017 --- Marcia Ball in Miami
Two shows: 7:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. at South Miami-Date Cultural Center, 10950 SW 211 Street, Cutler Bay, FL 33189, www.smdcac.org
Porchdogs and Nawlins Po Boyz at South Florida Fair
South Florida Fair in West Palm Beach has a New Orleans theme this year with dozens of Louisiana acts and attractions. Nawlins Po Boyz (every day from January 13 through January 18) and Porchdogs (every day January 19 through January 26) will be playing several times daily throughout the two weeks that the fair runs. To see the times each band is scheduled to play, go to http://www.southfloridafair.com/events
and click on the photo of the band you're interested in; the info of all times and days shows when you select the photo for any day. Other shows you might enjoy include Dr. John and the Nite Trippers, Reclaim Brass Band, Sidewalk Prophets, JP Soars, Molly Hatchet, Chef Landry's Comedy Cajun Cooking Show, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, 38 Special, and Crawdaddio. South Florida Fair, 9067 Southern Blvd., West Palm Beach.
Dwayne Dopsie and the Zydeco Hellraisers featured at Fort Myers Gumbo Fest this month
Sunday, Jan. 29, Shell Factory, 2787 N Tamiami Trl (US41), North Fort Myers, Florida 33903. Free admission to Gumbo Fest. Nature park requires paid admission. Address: 2787 Tamiami Trail North, U.S. 41, North Fort Myers, FL 33903. Phone: 239-995-2141. Porchdogs
(noon) and Dwayne Dopsie and The Zydeco Hellraisers (3:00 p.m.). The Shell Factory & Nature Park will host its annual Gumbo Fest! This year’s event will feature live entertainment suitable for dancing provided by Dwayne Dopsie & The Zydeco Hellraisers and The Porchdogs. Several types of gumbo will be available along with some unique festival food. Admission is free, with lots of children’s activities and a great day of fun for the entire family. Children will also have free admission to the Nature Park with a paid adult or senior admission. All proceeds benefit The Nature Park Environmental Foundation, which provides transportation for Lee County school students to visit the park. Capt’n Fishbones, the retail store and fun park, and the Soaring Eagle Zip Line will be open. Gumbo Fest is 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Information:
www.shellfactory.com
Easy Street Bayou Migrates to Louisiana in January;
Back at Zydeco Grille in Englewood in February
New Courtney Granger album Beneath Still Waters
gets attention from Rolling Stone
By Herman Fuselier (The Advertiser, Lafayette) A plug in Rolling Stone, with its 1.4 million readers, is an unreachable dream for most musicians. But for Lafayette’s George Jones disciple and Cajun fiddler Courtney Granger, it’s old news --- times two. After AmericanaFest 2016 last September in Nashville, Rolling Stone praised Granger in its list, “20 Best Things We Saw.” After listening to Beneath Still Waters, Granger’s old-school country debut, the magazine recently placed the CD on its “15 Great Country and Americana Albums You Didn’t Hear in 2016.” Rolling Stone
called Granger’s album, “an old-timey playlist for a barroom-medicated heartbreak.” On the list, he rubs shoulders with Mark Chesnutt, Wynonna and other stars. Rolling Stone is the latest national media outlet to fuel the bandwagon of kudos for Granger. For more than 20 years, local Cajun music fans have watched Granger grow into fiddling French singer with an old man’s soul, with groups like Balfa Toujours and most recently, the Pine Leaf Boys. Courtney Granger pays tribute to classic country on his new CD and vinyl album,
Beneath Still Waters. But the grandnephew of Cajun music's royal family, the Balfa Brothers, also feels a kinship to his country hero George Jones. When Jones died in 2013, Granger could no longer contain his desire to record a classic country album. Beneath Still Waters was born earlier this year on Valcour Records. The 13-song collection, also available on vinyl, contains lesser-known Jones songs, along with nuggets from Bill Anderson, Hank Cochran and Hazel Dickens. Saving Country Music.com said in a review, “everything that pours out of Courtney Granger’s mouth sounds like the second coming of George Jones.” No Depression
said, “This stuff is too good to keep all to yourself.” Granger was just happy to produce the CD with Balfa Toujours bandmate and longtime friend Dirk Powell of Breaux Bridge, a heralded musician who’s toured and recorded with Eric Clapton, Joan Baez and Loretta Lynn. “He knows my soul,” said Granger about Powell. “He knows my heart. He knows that type of music." “There was no question for me. If I was going to do this, it had to be with someone I felt comfortable with, someone who is going to let me express myself and not get in the way, and love it as much as I do. It was like a glove.” But Granger’s glove as a band leader is still a
fit in progress. He still plays with the Pine Leaf Boys and picks up available musicians when country gigs come calling.
Granger aims to maintain a steady country roster in 2017. “It’s a whole different beast, doing your own thing with your name out there. It’s a little intimidating. A little scary. But I’m working on it.”
Tab Benoit in Tampa
Wed. Jan. 18, 2017 --- Tab Benoit in Boca Raton, FL
The Funky Biscuit, 303 SE Mizner Blvd., Royal Palm Place, Boca Raton, FL 33432 Website: funkybiscuit.com
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Thurs. Jan. 19, 2017 --- Tab Benoit in Naples, FL
Naples Grande Beach Resort, 475 Seagate Drive, Naples, FL 34103
Website: http://www.naplesgrande.com
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Fri. Jan. 20 and Sat. Jan. 21, 2017 --- Tab Benoit in Tampa, FL
Tab Benoit at Skippers Smokehouse (Tampa)
Skippers Smokehouse, 910 Skipper Road Tampa, Florida 33613, Phone 813-971-0666. Website: http://skipperssmokehouse.com. Discount ticket prices for both Fri. and Sat.
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Tab is always a treat and always packs the house, so be prepared for a good time. Definitely one of Louisiana's best blues guitarists, and better yet he puts on a great show. Tab has a fan club in Tampa that shows up in numbers for every show. Don't miss "the show".
BeauSoleil in St. Petersburg
Fri. Feb. 17, 2017 ---BeauSoleil avec Michael Doucet (Bonita Springs, FL)
8 p.m. Center for Performing Arts - Hinman Auditorium
Tickets: $45 Premium Seats, $40 Center Seats, $35 Side Seats
Join us as BeauSoleil avec Micheal Doucet take the rich Cajun traditions of Louisiana and artfully blend zydeco, New Orleans Jazz, Tex-Mex, country, blues, swamp pop and more into an authentically satisfying musical recipe.
Website: http://www.artcenterbonita.org - - - - - - Various websites show BeauSoleil playing at Florida venues on different dates than shown. Dates I am posting are taken from the VENUE WEBSITES. Please confirm the actual date, time and venue if you have purchased tickets. - - - - - - Sat. Feb. 18, 2017 ---Beausoleil at Palladium (St. Petersburg, FL) (
8 p.m. The Palladium's Hough Hall, 253 Fifth Ave., St. Petersburg, FL. Tickets (listed as $29.50 and $39.50) on sale at www.mypalladium.org. Phone 727-893-7832. Note: this is in the theater, not the lounge.
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Sun. Feb. 19, 2017 ---Beausoleil at The Original Cafe Eleven (St. Augustine, FL)
8:30 p.m. The Original Cafe Eleven, 501 A1A Beach Blvd., St. Augustine, FL 32080. Website: www.originalcafe11.com
Tickets and accommodations now available for Florida's Cajun-Zydeco festival April 1 and April 2
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/crawdebaucherymusicfestival/
Website:
http://crawdebauchery.com Tickets are now on sale on the festival website for $25 per day or $45 for both days (prices are $40 per day at the gate). If you're traveling from out of town, get your tickets included in your hotel reservation by making your reservation through the festival website. There are only two hotels participating and quantity of rooms is limited. Reservation for two nights includes two free two-day general admission tickets. The New Orleans band The Revivalists will be the featured act at the fourth annual South Florida Crawfish
Festival, presented by CrawDebauchery, April 1-2, 2017 at the Pompano Beach Amphitheater Field. The stop in South Florida will be part of the band’s recently announced “Still Feeling Good from Yesterday” 2017 tour which kicks off in Fort Collins, Colo. on February 1. The band will be touring in support of its most recent album Men Amongst Mountains, which produced the single “Wish I Knew You.” The song reached number one on Billboard.com’s Adult Alternative chart and has remained on the chart for 26 weeks during 2016. “We’re very fortunate to be able to book this terrific band,” said festival organizer Don Matthews. “They are extremely popular. In fact, in March, Rolling Stone Magazine
named them as one of the ‘10 Bands You Need to Know.’” For your Cajun and zydeco dancing pleasure, the festival lineup includes Chubby Carrier and The Bayou Swamp Band, Roddie Romero and the Hub City All Stars, The Revelers, and Dwayne Dopsie and the Zydeco Hellraisers. The festival provides a tented wood dance floor where the music can be danced to from two stages. The festival poster (shown above) was created by blues artist Stan Street. Check out Stan's music, art and gallery at http://stanstreet.com.
Mose Allison sang the blues with whimsy and a twist of jazzThe Who, Yardbirds, Van Morrison, the Clash and Elvis Costello all covered Mose's prolific catalogPeople ask me questions 'bout the way I've spent my life.
Thirty years in showbiz, only had one wife.
Limousines an' swimmin' pools, I didn't get my share,
But I'm not downhearted. I am not downhearted.
I'm not downhearted, but I'm gettin' there.
I'm gettin' there. I'm gettin' there. Though he's been called "the William Faulkner of jazz" for his wry, incisively witty ditties delivered in a one-of-a-kind laconic style, Mose Allison preferred to think of himself as having more in common with sardonic writer-humorists Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut and Ambrose Bierce, all of whom had a firm grasp of the absurd while poking sticks at the foibles of life. Indeed, there has always been a kind of philosophical, questioning bent to Allison's lyrics, along with an innate sense of Southern-ness in his imagery. Mose Allison once described his music as fitting into three categories: slapstick, social comment and personal crisis. “Sometimes,” he added, “all three of those elements wind up in a tune.” Many
of his songs inhabit an air of wry amusement or exasperated skepticism, often pivoting on a single phrase. Ever since the world ended,
There's no more black or white.
Ever since we all got blended,
there's no more reason to fuss and fight.
Dogmas that we once defended
no longer seem worthwhile.
Ever since the world ended,
I face the future ---
With a smile.
According to Nate Chinen of
The New York Times, Mose Allison used his cool, clear voice with conversational effect with an easy blues inflection that harked back to his upbringing in rural Mississippi. Backing himself at the piano, he favored a loose call and response between voice and instrument, or between right and left hands, often taking tangents informed by the complex harmonies and rhythmic feints of bebop. His artistic persona, evident in his stage manner as well as his songs, suggested a distillation of folk wisdom in a knowing but unpretentious package.
Mose Allison, a pianist, singer and songwriter who straddled modern jazz and Delta blues, belonging to both styles even as he became a touchstone for British Invasion rockers and folksy troubadours, died in November at his home in Hilton Head, S.C. He was 89. The news of his passing, four days
after his birthday, was yet another heartbreaking loss in a week that already claimed the lives of two other pop music icons: Leonard Cohen and Leon Russell.
Generating His Own JoyMose married his wife, Audre, in 1949. They lived on Long Island, where they raised four children, including a daughter, Amy, who is a musician. Audre Allison said that when she first met Mose, "I could tell that he was someone who generated his own joy." She also said that "Mose has always paid attention to what is happening in the world, and has always read voraciously both past and present histories." He had strong views about "the domination of money over everything, the growing lack of empathy on the part of the powers-that-be for the population, wars and more wars, and an
underlying hypocrisy in society.” These sentiments were expressed over and over again in his lyrics. There must be someone somewhere
Who knows what it's all about
There must be someone somewhere
Who hasn't been found out Feeling strange watching the years go by
No change, I don't even bother to wonder why
In all this great creation
With its incandescent firmament
There is no consolation
For the natural born malcontent He admired the writing of Mark Twain and continued to read literary fiction and historical books throughout his life. “I always say my inspiration comes from three sources,” he told The Washington Post in 2004. (Mose viewed things in sets of three.) “One is the Mississippi Delta, the idioms, aphorisms and attitudes that I grew up with, which includes a lot of skepticism and exaggeration. The next thing was jazz musicians, and that’s a different thing. And the third influence is the English major.”
Roots in Tippo, MississippiMose John Allison Jr. was born Nov. 11, 1927, on a farm near Tippo, Miss. His father was a farmer, store owner and amateur piano player. His mother was a schoolteacher. Allison began taking piano lessons at 5 and grew up listening to jazz and blues records on jukeboxes. Count Basie and Tommy Dorsey were as much a part of his musical foundation as the blues of Sonny Boy Williamson, John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters, all of whom were born within 30 miles of Allison’s childhood home. Other early influences included jazz pianists Fats Waller, Earl Hines and Nat King Cole (better known in his early years as a
pianist than as a singer). By 16, Mose Allison was playing the piano and trumpet in local clubs. After serving in the Army, he graduated in 1952 from Louisiana State University as an English major. Allison moved to New York City in 1956 to pursue his music career. He began as a piano player, at a time when his style — percussive and jaunty, carried along by a percolating beat — suited the sound of the jazz mainstream. In addition to leading his own trio, he worked with some of the major small-group bandleaders of the late 1950s, including the saxophonists Stan Getz and Gerry Mulligan. Allison never stopped seeing himself as a jazz artist. “My definition of jazz is music that’s felt, thought and performed simultaneously. And that’s what I’m looking for
every night.” On the video at the end of this article, Mose goes on to explain the improvisational aspect of jazz: “What a jazz player does is he starts with something he knows and he works toward what he doesn’t know.”
Don't try to make me what I'm not
I just get by with what I've got
Live let live, that's my advice
If you got questions, ask me nice
Mr. Allison recorded his debut album, Back Country Suite, for Prestige Records in 1957. A song cycle for piano trio inspired by his down-home roots, it was well reviewed but not a great commercial success. The same was true of Local Color, his second album, which introduced “Parchman Farm.” At the time, his unorthodox musical blend often ran up against preconceived notions of style. “In the South, I’m considered an advanced bebop type,” he told DownBeat magazine in 1958. “In New York, I’m considered a country blues-folk type. Actually, I don’t think I’m either. Maybe I’m a little of both.”
Your molecular structure
Is really somethin’ fine
A first-rate example of functional design
Those cosmic undulations are steady comin’ through
Your molecular structure, baby
Me and you
Writes John Fordham for
The Guardian, “Allison always managed to sound cool and in a hurry at the same time. Needing nothing more than a piano, a microphone and a rhythm section to fire off his own biting updates on country-blues, he would hustle through his repertoire of laconic social commentary, and the classic songs of Tampa Red, Willie Dixon and many others, as if trying to squeeze a Delta discography into a single set. Rarely pausing for banter or biographical musings about himself or his heroes, the spare, faintly donnish Allison would clatter into the opening of a song when the last syllable of its namecheck was barely out of his mouth. The restless urban urgency of his methods brought a modernity (via bebop) to the earthy materials of the Delta, and a sophisticated irony to the direct and often accusatory themes of the blues.”
I done picking that cotton in a leather foot sack.
A goddamn shotgun at my back.
I been sitting over here on Parchman Farm
Ain't ever done nobody no wrong, no!
Mose’s Influence on Rock 'n RollHe was especially revered by 1960s English rockers who idolized the blues, and who saw in his example an accessible ideal. John Mayall recorded “Parchman Farm,” Mr. Allison’s ironic adaptation of a prison blues. Other songs by Mose Allison found their way onto albums by the Yardbirds, the Kinks and the Clash. The Who based their world-beating anthem “My Generation” partly on his “Young Man Blues,” which the band also featured as the opening track on its 1970 album,
Live at Leeds. Allison’s tunes were covered almost as widely by his fellow Americans, including the blues artists Paul Butterfield and Johnny Winter, the country-soul singer Bobbie Gentry and, more recently, the jazz vocalist and pianist Diana Krall. The Pixies, a pace-setting alternative-rock band, named an album track “Allison” in his honor. Tim Sommer, writing for Observer.com, judged The Clash’s exhaustive fourth LP Sandinista! was, in fact, “a sprawling mess, resembling some kind of well-meaning dish that combines far too many under-cooked and over-thought ingredients.” But one of the real gems lost in this six-sided beast is this gleefully straight-laced version of this jaunty cut from Mose Allison’s 1964 LP
A Word From Mose, “Look Here,” and featuring the nimble piano work of Mickey Gallagher. It’s a complete anomaly amidst the directionless sprawl of Sandinista!, says Tim Sommer, but one that shows this group’s dexterity as both musicians and listeners. Look here, what you think you gon' be doin' next year
No lie, how you know you not gon' up and die
No doubt, soon enough your friends will find you out
Take care you know you might not have much time to spare
I say, how long have you acted up this way
What know, when you gonna get your own floor show
I'm hip, you could use a button on your lip
Look here, what you think you gon' be doin' next year
Van Morrison recorded a whole album of Mose Allison songs in 1995 with English R&B singer Georgie Fame. The list of pop and rock acts who’ve forged their sonic identities from the bridges he constructed is staggering, from Randy Newman to Joni Mitchell to Steely Dan to Elvis Costello to Tom Waits to Rickie Lee Jones to Madeline Peyroux to the people who made the songs for Schoolhouse Rock. His sound was the definition of hipster cool back when being called such a thing was a badge of honor, not a backhanded compliment.
I've been doing some thinking about the nature of the universe
I found out things are getting better, it's just that people are getting worse
Well ain't that just like living, just like famine strike
Ain't that just like living --- what ever happened to real life?
I've been sitting around thinking about ultimate knowledge and such
The smartest man in the whole round world really don't know that much
Well ain't that just like living, blame it on your wife
Ain't that just like living --- what ever happened to real life?
“Bonnie Raitt was the first one to do it, way before anyone else,” Allison said once in an interview in regards to her version of “Everybody’s Cryin’ Mercy” on her 1973 album,
Takin’ My Time. “She’s a good friend of mine, and I opened shows for her at that time.” On this record, Raitt took a dive into the worlds of New Orleans R&B, jazz and calypso, buoyed by an all-star cast of session musicians including Taj Mahal, Bill Payne and Lowell George of Little Feat, Orleans’ John Hall and legendary studio drummer Jim Keltner. But it was her sultry reading of this otherwise sharp anti-war protest song that was the obvious highlight; the warmth of her voice slyly lured you into the melody before knocking your head with its message.
People running 'round in circles
Don't know what they're headed for
Everybody's crying peace on earth
Just as soon as we win this war Well you don't have to go to off-Broadway
To see something plain absurd
Everybody's crying mercy
When they don't know the meaning of the word
Eight Hundred Pounds of Electric Genitalia“When I make my Top 40 smash hit rock ‘n’ roll record everything’s gonna be just fine,” sings Robert Palmer, tongue firmly implanted in cheek, interpreting a song from Allison’s 1987 Blue Note LP Ever Since The World Ended
for his 1990 album
Don’t Explain. Ron Hart, writing for Observer.com, says Palmer was perhaps the only artist at the time who could pull off such a cover, since he could have very well been the subject Mose was singing about back then in the wake of English art-pop icon’s seismic run on the pop charts in the mid-to-late ’80s. But his rendition, the highlight of the album, gave Allison’s sense of sarcasm even more bite considering its arrival two years after “Simply Irresistible” ruled Billboard and MTV. And the stripping away of the synths and processed electric guitars in favor of well-arranged strings, brass and acoustic piano drove home the point of Palmer’s frustration with the hit machine more than anything else he could have done in wake of his overexposure. The world might not have been ready for a Robert Palmer jazz album in 1990. Now
we might consider “Don’t Explain” written by Mose Allison one of the late singer’s finest and most adventurous works. When I make my Top 40
Smash hit
Rock 'n' roll record
Everything is gonna be just fine
When I make my Top 40
Smash hit
Rock 'n' roll disc
I'll be the record company's valentine
No more philosophic melancholia
Eight hundred pounds of electric genitalia
When I make my Top 40
Smash hit
Rock 'n' roll record
Everything's gonna be just fine Mose Allison’s moved to Atlantic Records had begun to sharpen his reputation as a singer and songwriter. His first album for the label, I Don’t Worry About a Thing, released in 1962, introduced several of his best-known tunes, including the title track, a blues that deflates its own trite expression with a caustic addendum: “’Cause I know nothing’s going to be all right.” When Atlantic released The Word From Mose
in 1964, the album cover featured a memorable tagline next to Mr. Allison’s photograph: “Words of wisdom from the jazz sage.” Rather than make a pop or rhythm-and-blues album for the label, Mr. Allison stuck to his hybrid style, and his relatively modest commercial profile. He settled down on Long Island, where he lived for more than 40 years with his family before moving to Hilton Head Island.
Your Mind is on VacationBy my count, I didn’t discover Mose Allison until his 20th album release in 1976, Your Mind is On Vacation. I was struck by the impertinent put-down, “Your mind is on vacation but your mouth is working overtime.” And the album artwork by noted graphic designer and illustrator Seymour Chwast depicts a two-faced cigar-chomping businessman with an elegantly appointed but “empty room” in his head.
You're sitting there yakkin' right in my face
I guess I'm gonna have to put you in your place
Y'know if silence was golden
You couldn't raise a dime
Because your mind is on vacation and your mouth is
Working overtime Allison appeared in Jeff Stein’s 1979 rock documentary, The Kids Are Alright, about The Who, a band that covered Mose Allison’s “Young Man Blues.” You know in the old days
When a young man was a strong man
All the people they'd step back
When a young man walked by But you know nowadays
It's the old man
He's got all the money
And a young man ain't got nothin' in the world these days
I said nothing Regularly working with the bassist Mel Graves and drummer George Marsh, Mose Allison toured steadily, and moved to the Elektra and then Blue Note labels in the 80s. The latter company sought to rebrand him through collaborations with various guests --- from the New Orleans band on My Backyard (1989) to contemporary jazz stars including the trumpeter Randy Brecker, saxophonist Joe Lovano and guitarist John Scofield on The Earth Wants You in 1994. But Allison never sounded better than when left to himself and he confirmed that the acuity of his observational powers was undimmed when turned toward the insights and ironies of senior citizenship.
I'm a certified senior citizen
Got Florida on my mind
I won't even mess with checkers and chess
Just take me to the place where they bump and grind
This year — It all seems too clear
Understood — It ain't nothin' but another childhood The influence of long-gone blues guitarists on his piano technique would always be audible on classic songs such as “What’s Your Movie?,” but he would typically impart a defiant rather than romantic air to a standard ballad such as “You Are My Sunshine” and the original “How Much Truth (Can a Man Stand?)” John Fordham followed Mose Allison at his numerous appearances at a jazz club in London, which he took to visiting twice a year in the 90s and early 2000s. According to Fordham, Allison would sometimes seem to be in a fascinating private reverie, in which stomping bluesy figures would wrestle with swirling, wind-in-trees melodies, or turn into a jerky clatter like a silent-movie
soundtrack. “Ain’t Got Nothing But the Blues”, “Trouble in Mind” and “Knock on Wood” might hurtle by in a blur. The pungency and vigor of Allison’s work with local sidemen at the club was admirably caught on a fine collection by Blue Note Records in 2000, The Mose Chronicles: Live in London Volumes 1 & 2. Since my ever loving baby left town
Ain't got no rest in my slumbers
Ain't got no feelings to bruise
Ain't got no telephone numbers
I ain't got nothing but the blues
In 2010 at age 83, Allison showed some signs of slowing down when he made his last studio recording, The Way of the World, produced by Joe Henry. Henry captured the essence of Mose in one insightful passage in the liner notes of that album: "For many of us, Mose Allison has long stood as a great swaying bridge spanning our strange, stormy times: linking the fifties to the present; the mystical country blues to the urbanity of jazz; tough beat poetry to wistful self-reflection; seduction to candor, heart to mind, wit to wisdom; Mark Twain straight through to Willie Dixon, with Chico Marx barking directions from the backseat, James Stewart at the wheel." Like the Mississippi River, Mose seemed to just keep rolling along.
I know you didn’t mean it when you stole my coat
It just happened to be the logical one.
I know you didn’t mean it when you slit my throat
You were just out with the fellas trying to have some fun
I know you didn’t mean it when you blew us up
You just happened to think it was a good idea
Ungrateful people try to interrupt
When you were just trying to make your viewpoint clear
And though the lyrics of Allison’s best songs became well known, his performances could always produce freshly disconcerting versions of the devastating one-liners that included “your mind’s on vacation but your mouth’s working overtime”, “I’m nobody today but I was somebody last night” and “ever since the world ended, I don’t go out so much”. A live album recorded in 2006, Mose Allison American Legend, Live in California, was released in 2015 and captured some of that.
A Thread Between Willie Dixon and Mark TwainSpeaking to Rolling Stone
before Allison's death, Pete Townshend says, "Mose was a huge, huge crush of mine. I just loved him. I loved everything he did. I did exactly the same thing." Van Morrison wrote, “It is very difficult for me to express my sense of loss and sadness over his death. Mose was a brilliant musician, but he was more than that: he was a philosopher. I followed him all of my life, and I was devoted to his music. Mose will be deeply missed." "He was the thread that connected Willie Dixon and Mark Twain," summarized Joe Henry. In recent years Mr. Allison stopped performing but kept receiving accolades. A marker with his name and biographical details was added to the Mississippi Blues Trail in 2012. The next year, he was recognized as a National Endowment for the
Arts Jazz Master, the highest honor for jazz musicians.
At the induction ceremony in Manhattan, Mr. Allison accompanied his daughter Amy at the piano in a version of his ballad “Was.” A parlor waltz with connotations both mortal and memorial, it begins with some verb-tense wordplay, quickly turning poignant: When I become was,
And we become were
Will there be any sign or a trace
Of the lovely contour of your face?
And will there be someone around
With essentially my kind of sound?
Discography1957 — Back Country Suite (Prestige)
1957 — Local Color (Prestige)
1958 — Young Man Mose (Prestige)
1958 — Ramblin' with Mose (Prestige)
1958 — Creek Bank (Prestige)
1959 — Autumn Song (Prestige)
1959 — Transfiguration of Hiram Brown (Columbia)
1960 — I Love the Life I Live (Columbia)
1961 — Takes to the Hills (Epic) (re-released in 1966 as V-8 Ford Blues)
1962 — I Don't Worry About a Thing (Atlantic)
1962 — Swingin' Machine (Atlantic)
1963 — Mose Allison Sings (Prestige)
1964 — The Word from Mose (Atlantic)
1965 — Wild Man on the Loose (Atlantic)
1965 — Mose Alive! (Atlantic)
1968 — I've Been Doin' Some Thinkin' (Atlantic)
1969 — Hello There, Universe (Atlantic)
1971 — Western Man (Atlantic)
1972 — Mose in Your Ear (Atlantic)
1976 — Your Mind Is on Vacation (Atlantic)
1978 — Pure Mose (32 Jazz), live recordings
1982 — Middle Class White Boy (Discovery)
1982 — Lessons in Living [live] (Elektra)
1987 — Ever Since the World Ended (Blue Note)
1989 — My Backyard (Blue Note)
1993 — The Earth Wants You [live] (Blue Note)
1996 — Tell Me Something: The Songs of Mose Allison
with Van Morrison, Georgie Fame and Ben Sidran
1997 — Gimcracks and Gewgaws (Blue Note)
2001 — The Mose Chronicles: Live in London, vol. 1 (Blue Note)
2002 — The Mose Chronicles: Live in London, vol. 2 (Blue Note)
2010 — The Way of the World (ANTI-)
2015 — Mose Allison American Legend Live in California Missed the Saturday dance
Heard they crowded the floor
Couldn't bear it without you
I don't get around much anymore
Outside Florida
Atlanta Cajun Zydeco AssociationJan. 7, 2017 --- Zydeco Ya Ya
Benson Center, 6500 Vernon Woods Drive, Sandy Springs, GA 30328; Phone: 404-613-4900. Free beginners dance lesson 7-8 p.m. Free intermediate dance lesson 6:15 p.m. to 7 p.m. Dance to live music 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. ACZA will be hosting the following bands over the next several months:
Saturday, Feb. 4 --- Dennis Stroughmatt & Creole Stomp
Saturday, Mar. 4 --- Jeffery Broussard & the Creole Cowboys Atlanta Cajun Zydeco Association website: http://aczadance.org/
Houston/Texas Cajun-Zydeco Eventshttp://www.zydecoevents.com/texaszydecoevents.html Southern California Eventshttp://www.icajunzydeco.com
If you missed last month's newsletter...Discover all of the Update! newsletters and feature stories on Cajun and zydeco artists on the "Stories" page at floridacajunzydeco.com/stories.html
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