In the 1960s and ’70s, it was very rare for any African-Americans, other than survivors from the early days, to be playing Dixieland and pre-swing Classic Jazz. For a variety of reasons, they did not feel welcome in the generally conservative atmosphere even though their ancestors were often the ones who had been the music’s key innovators. That situation began to change when Wynton Marsalis in the late 1980s and ’90s started championing Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and some other heroes of early jazz. Gradually more African-Americans have been exploring vintage jazz since then although they are still a small minority. Colin Hancock, who doubles on brass and reed instruments, certainly has stood out in his generation, studying 1920s jazz as a teenager and now in his late twenties leading the Jazz Hounds (named after Johnny Dunn’s early group).
Catherine Russell has explored a wide variety of music in her career. She was primarily a backup singer with rock and pop groups until she was in her late forties. Since then she has had a very successful career in jazz as a solo singer, leading nine albums and performing everything from songs associated with her father pianist Luis Russell, to swing standards, vintage obscurities, blues from several different eras, and 1950s r&b.
Cat & The Hounds, which teams together Catherine Russell with Colin Hancock’s Jazz Hounds, casts the singer in a slightly different role than usual. Imagine her performing in 1925 in a versatile style not that different from Ethel Waters, singing classic blues, current pop songs, and vaudeville tunes with a seven-piece band filled with key players from the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra. The instrumentalists (Hancock on cornet and C-melody sax, trombonist Dion Tucker, Evan Christopher on clarinet, soprano and alto, pianist Jon Thomas, Kerry Lewis on tuba, drummer Ahmad Johnson, and Jerron Paxton on banjo, guitar and harmonica with Vince Giordano guesting on bass sax during two of the dozen numbers) sound very much like a group from that era.
Their solos are brief so as to fit into the three-minute restriction with the band getting two instrumentals: “Gypsy Blues” and an orchestral version of James P. Johnson’s “Carolina Shout.”
Among the other highlights are the lowdown “Panama Limited Blues,” “You’ve Got Everything a Sweet Mama Needs But Me,” the goodtime “Everybody Mess Around,” “Crazy Blues,” and “Sweet Man.” In addition, Catherine Russell and Jerron Paxton revive Butterbeans & Susie on “Elevator Papa, Switchboard Mama.”
While I wish that Colin Hancock had opened up some of these performances to allow longer solos (the dozen songs only total 37 minutes of music), Cat & The Hounds is quite successful in bringing back the style and spirit of mid-1920s African-American jazz.
Cat & The Hounds
Turtle Bay TBR 25005
www.turtlebayrecords.com
Since 1975 Scott Yanow has been a regular reviewer of albums in many jazz styles. He has written for many jazz and arts magazines, including JazzTimes, Jazziz, Down Beat, Cadence, CODA, and the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, and was the jazz editor for Record Review. He has written an in-depth biography on Dizzy Gillespie for AllMusic.com. He has authored 11 books on jazz, over 900 liner notes for CDs and over 20,000 reviews of jazz recordings.
Yanow was a contributor to and co-editor of the third edition of the All Music Guide to Jazz. He continues to write for Downbeat, Jazziz, the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, the Jazz Rag, the New York City Jazz Record and other publications.
