The Hot Club Of San Francisco has been active since the early 1990s. There have been many personnel changes along the way other than its leader guitarist Paul Mehling. The current version includes violinist Evan Price, rhythm guitarists Jordan Samuels, and Nelson Hutchison, and bassist Dexter Williams.
Most unusual about their latest release, Original Gadjo, is that all 14 songs are by band members with each musician in the quintet contributing at least one original. The music is mostly very much in the Gypsy Jazz tradition although there is occasional stretching of the style. The harmonically advanced “Manic Swing” lives up to its title, giving one the impression that the musicians are not quite sure where the music is going but it is certainly getting there fast. The brief closer “Fairweather Genius” can be thought of as a soundtrack to a bizarre dream.
Also heard along the way are such worthy pieces as the spirited “Busy Bone” which has bassist Williams switching to valve trombones, a melancholy waltz (“Blame It On The Asiago”), the tango “Para Ti” (one of several songs that have Cullen Luper added on baritone violin), and “Hwy 17” (based on “I’ve Found A New Baby”), In addition to Mehling (who takes an effective vocal on “Running To You: Blues On The G String”), violinist Price and bassist Williams are excellent soloists and everyone plays quite well within the tradition.
The Hot Club Of San Francisco deserves a lot of credit for keeping their music and their repertoire fresh after more than three decades.
The Hot Club of San Francisco • Original Gadjo
HCR 2706
www.hotclubsf.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.
