Founded in 2019, the Hot Toddies Jazz Band is a popular swing group based in New York that is led by drummer Patrick Soluri and features the singing of Hannah Gill and Queen Esther. Their third recording, Triple Step, also includes trumpeter Alphonso Horne, the reeds of Linus Wyrsch, trombonist Jake Handelman, guitarist Justin Poindexter, and bassist Ian Hutchison with organist Jason Yeager appearing on four of the 15 selections.
Triple Step features the band and its singers performing mostly pretty familiar swing standards with the only exceptions being the slightly later “School Days” and Jelly Roll Morton’s fairly obscure “Why.” In addition to Hannah Gill and Queen Esther, who are equally skilled and consistently swing, Poindexter and Handelman take one vocal apiece. The only instrumental is “Softly As In A Morning Sunrise.”
While one wishes that there were more instrumentals so the soloists could stretch out a bit, this is a recording that can be equally enjoyed by dancers and listeners. Among the songs that the Hot Toddies clearly have fun performing are “In A Mellow Tone,” “You Made Me Love You,” “’Deed I Do,” and a rambunctious version of “School Days.”
Triple Step
Hot Toddies Jazz Band
Prohibition Productions
www.hottoddies.band
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.
