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Mose Allison: Mose Allison: American Legend in California
Tippo, Mississippi is about as far from Charleston as it is Tutwiler, the two county seats of Tallahatchie County, located on the northeastern edge of the alluvial Delta plain, before the land turns to rolling hills. There lives in Tippo, an Allison family, who thirty years ago were patients of mine when I was practicing pharmacy while attending graduate school. That is Allison...as in, Mose Allison. I Mose Allison's mother and brother frequently during the 10 years I kicked around ...
read moreMose Allison: Back in the (Studio) Saddle
Mose Allison, the singer/songwriter blues/jazz man from the Mississippi Delta, has reached the age of 82. He's packed into that lifetime some 60 years in the music business and on the road. He's still playing more than 100 club and concert dates a year, from New York to California, across the pond in England and elsewhere.He's recorded steadily during those years, his albums all well received in the jazz community by critics and fans alike. But over the ...
read moreA Modest Proposal: Joe Henry's Letter-Writing Campaign Results in Mose Allison's First Record in 12 years
Joe Henry's strategy for coaxing Mose Allison back to the studio for the first time in twelve years was simple enough: All he had to do was quietly and thoughtfully stalk the jazz icon for a year.
“He kept at it, and kept calling me and emailing and so forth," the 82-year-old Allison said of the courting process by Henry, who received two Grammy nominations this month for his production on Allen Toussaint's The Bright Mississippi and Ramblin' Jack Elliott's ...
read moreMose Allison at Nighttown
Nighttown Cleveland Heights, Ohio August 29, 2009
Mose Allison sings for survivors. He always has. He sings easy, buoyant blues in a lackadaisical style. His voice, while rubbed at the edges from more than 50 years on the road, is still crisp with vaudevillian nonchalance. He accompanies himself with confident, insistent piano vamps drawn as much from Wagner as Waller, and his solos are constantly inventive and invigorating while never straying from the familiar. Moreover, ...
read moreMose Allison: Mose Allison Sings
Working through Prestige Records' reissue of Mose Allison Sings, the challenge arises of describing the pianist/vocalist's unique sound. The salty-sweet taste of butter and jam on toast is at once an unspectacular metaphor and right on the mark. Allison's music is a delicious blend of tart and tang, as enjoyable in the morning as it is a late-night snack, simple yet significant, unassuming and infectious. His style is indelibly his own, residing somewhere between the Delta blues ...
read moreMose Allison: Mose Allison Sings
There's nobody else quite like Mose Allison. Try to think of a musician who even comes close. He's so unique that we all know from the very start who we're listening to. And nobody else can fill that niche. But Allison didn't start out as a singer. He was Stan Getz's pianist in 1956-57, and he began recording for Prestige as a pianist who also played trumpet in 1957. His piano trio did bebop instrumentals, and Allison added an occasional ...
read moreMose Allison: Mose Allison Sings
At first glance, Mose Allison Sings might seem to be just another reissued jazz recording from the 1950s. Like most CDs of this ilk, it has been digitally remastered and has additional “bonus" tracks now possible without the space limitations of vinyl records.
A cynic might use the term “old wine in new bottles" to characterize many of these reissues. There are exceptions, of course, and this album is one. The most compelling reason to reexamine an old album stems ...
read moreMose Allison: Ramblin' with Mose
Through a career spanning a half-century, Mose Allison has been known mostly for his bluesy hipster vocals and comical compositions like “Your Mind is on Vacation, But Your Mouth is Working Overtime. But he's also a fine bebop-flavored pianist who even spent time back in the '50s in the rhythm sections of such jazz titans as Stan Getz, Al Cohn and Zoot Sims. The recently reissued Ramblin' with Mose, originally released in 1958, puts Allison's piano front ...
read moreMose Allison at Yoshi's
Is there any living jazz artist so utterly, comprehensively American as Mose Allison? His melting-pot piano style, which seamlessly combines the sounds of back country and big city; his carefree, everyman way of singing; his sly cynicism -- these are all reflections of the national character, and the basis of his five decades of popularity.Allison put both charm and chops on display for a midweek stint at Yoshi's jazz club in Oakland February 8-10, working in a trio setting. ...
read moreMose Allison: Substance and Style
The music of Mose Allison, the slick hipster from the Mississippi delta, never fails to get at least a wry, knowing smile from listeners, if not outright laughter--on CD or live in a nightclub. Those that know his work--and that audience is growing, he says--are attracted to his simple, bluesy style as well as his witty, observational way with a lyric. He has a warm, deep tone that doesn't have a lot of range, but don't worry about ...
read moreMose Allison: Greatest Hits: The Prestige Collection
From Tippo, Mississippi to the tip of jazz’s pantheon, Mose Allison has had one of the genre’s most enduring and beloved careers. Now well into his golden years, the honey and chickoree-voiced storyteller continues to reminisce about his beloved South. Among the prevalent themes on this gently sparkling collection are the infamous 12-foot cotton sack and other elements of life on the plantation (including life on the penal farm for spousal homicide). It was a different place and a different ...
read moreMose Allison: The Mose Chronicles: Live In London, Volume 2
“Tell me something that I don’t know,” sings Mose Allison on one of his tongue-in-cheek originals. Twelve more of his songs and several familiar standards comprise Volume 2 from his recent London appearance. Recorded just over two years ago at the Pizza Express, Allison added guitar for this set. Quirky and original, the singer/pianist carries on the tradition. Blues humor and jazz syncopation make fine companions. Who else do you know that sings about one’s molecular structure, one’s mouth that ...
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