Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Harry Allen-Joe Cohen Quartet with Rebecca Kilgore and E...

365

Harry Allen-Joe Cohen Quartet with Rebecca Kilgore and Eddie Erickson: The Harry Allen-Joe Cohn Quartet Plays Music From South Pacific

By

View read count
Harry Allen-Joe Cohen Quartet with Rebecca Kilgore and Eddie Erickson: The Harry Allen-Joe Cohn Quartet Plays Music From South Pacific
The days when recordings were routinely issued covering a current Broadway hit musical are long past. Fortunately no one told that to Arbors Records. With Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific enjoying a smash revival, here comes the Harry Allen/Joe Cohn Quartet and vocalists Rebecca Kilgore and Eddie Erickson with innovative, knockout performances of one of the greatest of all Broadway scores.

With a voice filled with smiles for miles, Kilgore proves to be pinpoint perfect, delightfully inhabiting "A Cockeyed Optimist" and "Wash That Man Right Out My Hair," as if prepared at any moment actually to perform those famously upbeat songs on stage. On "Younger Than Springtime," Erickson's approach is novel. His is a warm, smoothly swinging, low-key rendering of a song usually performed at near operatic level. A novel consideration of "Bloody Mary" gets things distinctly jumping on one of the set's three straight instrumentals. Allen steps front and center and delivers 16 bars of Ben Webster-like beauty, reaffirming yet again what a supreme master he is. When joined by Cohn, they are soon batting eights and fours out of the park.

There's more of that romantic Webster-esque blowing from Allen as he backs up the singers on "Some Enchanted Evening." "Twin Soliloquies" would hardly seem to be fertile stuff for jazz, yet Kilgore and Erickson imbue it with a gently swinging flow that is enriched by Allen. 60 years on, this gang succeeds in revealing anew totally engaging and fresh possibilities in South Pacific.

Track Listing

A Cock-eyed Optimist; Younger Than Springtime; Bloody Mary; Twin Soliloquies; I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair; There Is Nothin' Like A Dame; Dites-Moi; A Wonderful Guy; Honey Bun; Some Enchanted Evening; You've Got To Be Carefully Taught; My Girl Back Home; This Nearly Was Mine; Bali Ha'i.

Personnel

Harry Allen
saxophone

Harry Allen: tenor saxophone; Joe Cohn: guitar; Joel Forbes: bass; Chuck Riggs: drums; Rebecca Kilgore: vocals; Eddie Erickson: vocals.

Album information

Title: The Harry Allen-Joe Cohn Quartet Plays Music From South Pacific | Year Released: 2009 | Record Label: Arbors Records

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT



Harry Allen Concerts


Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

Near

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.