Description
Release Date: 2019
Label: Independent
Track List
Disc: 1
- When You’re Smiling/Smile
- I’m Confessin’
- House Of The Rising Sun/St. James Infirmary Blues (featuring Don Vappie)
- Buddy Bolden’s Blues
- La Vie En Rose
- The Song Is Ended
- Stardust
- The Way You Look Tonight
- It Had To Be You
- The Odd Couple
- Desperdo
- When It’s Sleepy Time Down South
Disc: 2
- The Blues In The Night
- Never The Less
- I Cover The Waterfront
- Come Rain Or Come Shine
- If I Only Had A Brain/If I only Had A Trane
- The Godfather Waltz
- Cheek To Cheek
- Same Girl
- The Man I Love
- Blackbird
- Ballad Of The Sad Young Men
- Happy Trails
Notes
Stride piano in New York City means the blazing pyrotechnics of Fats Waller, James P. Johnson, Art Tatum and others. New Orleans Stride is a slower cousin, a loping rhythm, akin to rag but with an underlying triple-meter feel most associated with James Booker (think “Sunny Side of the Street”) and Pittsburgh’s Erroll Garner.
This medium tempo beat is important here, because after Katrina Matt took up singing. In a city of great pianists, he’s about the only one jazzing the Great American Songbook as a solo pianist/vocalist. He’s got an expressive voice, sometimes straight, often wise-guyish. And his piano playing is always interesting: bluesy, offbeat filigree that is never predictable.
There are lots of standards in this two-CD set; many of them with excavated verses that are rarely heard, always a plus. There’s a clever medley with the ever-dependable Don Vappie of like-sounding tunes: “House of the Rising Sun/ Amazing Grace (in minor)/ I Want Jesus to Walk With Me/ St James Infirmary Blues,” ending in a Brazilian jam—also a version of “If I Only Had a Brain” that incorporates the chords of “Giant Steps” (therefore, “If I Only Had a Trane.”)
And true to his wide-ranging character, there are pop songs: “Desperado”, Randy Newman’s “Same Girl,” “Blackbird,” “Ballad of the Sad Young Men.”
