Mose Allison: Live 1978

There are plenty of post-war jazz songwriter-pianists who work overtime to be with-it. Some come off as Beat poets and cool daddy-o's while others strain to be clever phrase-turners and honky-tonk players. For me, there are only two truly hip originals—Thelonious Monk and Mose Allison. Monk and Mose each had a distinct sound that was both jagged and playful and both were humble and almost meek off the bandstand, a true mark of cool. The difference between them is that Monk was focused solely on the music (grunts aside) and Mose sang while he played.

Between 1976 and 1987, Mose recorded just two studio albums—Your Mind Is on Vacation (1976) for Atlantic and Ever Since the World Ended (1987) for Blue Note. In between, Mose gigged tirelessly, but only five live recordings from his club dates have surfaced.

Now there are six. Recently, Liberation Hall Records released Mose Allison: Live 1978, featuring Mose's vocals and piano backed by Tom Rutley on bass and Jerry Granelli on drums. The album was recorded at the Showboat Lounge in Silver Spring, Md., on March 26, 1978, by Dick Drevo, and the sound is clean and very good.

Mose sings and plays eight originals and five covers. Here are the songs...

• Lost Mind (Percy Mayfield)
• Wildman on the Loose (Mose Allison)
• Your Molecular Structure (Mose Allison)
• It Feels So Good (Mose Allison)
• Swingin' Machine (Mose Allison)
• You Can Count on Me to Do My Part (Mose Allison)
• I Live the Life I Love (Willie Dixon)
• If You're Goin' Up to the City (Mose Allison)
• Hey Good Lookin' (Hank Williams)
• Meet Me at No Special Place (Arthur Terker, Harry Pyle and Russell Robinson)
• Seventh Son (Willie Dixon)
• Wildman (Mose Allison)
• Your Mind Is on Vacation (Mose Allison)

Mose's song lyrics are clever without trying hard, his sense of humor is sophisticated without being cute and his piano is as earthy as can be and often sounds as if two or three people are playing at the same time. This album is true cool and pure joy.

Mose Allison died in 2016. I miss talking to him and absorbing his rural-meets-urban wisdom sense of humor. He had plenty of both.

JazzWax clips: Here's If You're Goin' Up to the City...



And here's Wildman. Dig Mose's piano...