Leo Forde • Double Whisky

Guitarist Leo Forde has been living and working in New Orleans since 2014 but, I was pleased to discover, he’s one of ours—a Brit (although, being a Scot, he may take offense at that descriptor). He has made great friends over there, in the sense that his friends are also great musicians and singers: people like Meschiya Lake and Aurora Nealand, with whom he frequently works. He’s also established the Gizinti Jazz Band, including rhythm guitarist John Rodli and bassist Nobu Ozaki, both of whom appear on his latest record Double Whisky. This gypsy jazz offering is a smorgasbord of ten toe-tapping and heart-rending tunes famously played by Django Reinhardt and friends. It also features the Stéphane Grappelli-like string stylings of Ben Powell and piano accompaniment by David Boeddinghaus. Entries on its track list include Gershwins classic “Oh, Lady be Good!” and Irving Caesar’s “Just a Gigolo,” alongside “I Surrender Dear”—Bing Crosby’s first hit, shellacked with Gus Arnheim in 1931. The arrangements are rich and interesting with Boeddinghaus, Ozaki, and Rodli amply filling the space beneath Powell’s soaring solos, and this goes as much for the slow numbers as the quick ones. Their version of “Just a Gigolo” is a particularly mournful one, in which Powell’s fiddle dances an anxious jig over his bandmates’ morosely plodding accompaniment—like fits