Deep River
My Melancholy Baby
I've Found a New Baby
Mack the Knife
Creole Gumbo
You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me
Side B
Londonderry Air
Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen
After You've Gone
Gin Mill Blues
Little Rock Getaway
Blue Lou
- Pete Fountain * Clarinet
- Merle Koch * Piano
- Don Bagley * Bass
- Jack Sperling * Drums
It's difficult to imagine any current musician releasing albums at the prolific rate of Pete Fountain in 1960. After the rapid succession of Pete Fountain's New Orleans, The Blues, and Pete Fountain Day, the clarinetist newly liberated from the world of Lawrence Welk and commercial music fired off his first small club live recording with Pete Fountain At The Bateau Lounge -- an astonishing fourth album in five months. Like the others in this series of Coral records, Pete is in top shape, partially because of the intense work schedule he was maintaining since returning to New Orleans. At the Bateau lounge he and the band were performing four shows a night, six nights a week, and the tightness of the ensemble show the value of that work.
Leading off the set is the traditional spiritual, 'Deep River', which had been recorded multiple times in the popular song adaptation version entitled 'Dear Old Southland' by Sidney Bechet. Contrasting Bechet's broad and heartfelt rhapsodizing, Pete ratchets up the tempo, sizzling with exuberance. While the choice of title was probably related to multiple factors, the symbolism serves to highlight the lyrics of the African-American spiritual:
Deep river,
My home is over Jordan.
Deep river, Lord.
I want to cross over into campground.
My home is over Jordan.
Deep river, Lord.
I want to cross over into campground.
Oh, don't you want to go,
To the Gospel feast;
That Promised Land,
Where all is peace?
To the Gospel feast;
That Promised Land,
Where all is peace?
This 'Melancholy Baby' is one of Pete's finest, and once again we hear why Pete's clarinet and Jack Sperling's drumming were so well matched. As usual when those two were in the same band, the rest of the group work around that central dialogue, Koch and Bagley gently murmuring responses.
'I've Found a New Baby', another stalwart Fountain show piece, is presented with polish, verve, and inspiration--the crowd appreciating everyone, and the intensity of the live date coming through. Sperling's drum solo, replete with double bass drums, is a high point, providing Pete with a launching pad for the ride out.
Aside from the standards on the album, we're treated to an original called "Creole Gumbo" credited to Fountain, Koch, and Bud Dant (arranger for many of Pete's big band, orchestral, and even small group numbers). It's a riff tune reminiscent in some ways of 'Struttin' With Some Bar-B-Cue' or any number of Benny Goodman sextet tunes like 'Seven Come Eleven' or 'Air Mail Special', but with a particularly Fountainesque flavor. The band obviously enjoys it, with Jack Sperling contributing a chorus of melodic drum soloing.
While I love all the cuts on this album, three from Side B stand out in particular to me. 'Londonderry Air' (Danny Boy) is the first--a medium uptempo version of the classic Irish Ballad, proving once again that anything lyrical is fit for the style of Fountain. The next is 'Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen.' Pete's take is intimate, reverent, but resolute. In the tradition of New Orleans clarinet that runs from Irving Fazola through Pete, there is a sweetness of sound he is able to get, matched by few others, while still retaining depth of statement. As a jazz clarinetist who in many ways specializes in Trad/NOLA style, I'm always less than impressed if the only means a player has to express depth is by becoming more extroverted. Contrasting Pete with those whose style demands an overwrought approach is instructive: he has a far wider expressive palette, generated primarily from his tone, his attacks, and his phrasing. This is sometimes paradoxically lost on many modern jazz musicians and academics, but never on the public. And in fact, these things are perhaps even more important musical concerns for a professional than any amount of obscure harmonic analysis or rationalizing.
'Gin Mill Blues' is my other favorite, simply because any time Pete plays a blues, I'll be listening.
This album is one of those that doesn't really transport the listener back in time, at least not me, simply because the music making sounds so valid today. It's perfect nightclub music--exuberant, relaxing, refined, intelligent, confiding, and heartfelt. Along with the others of this era that Pete cut, it's one of the finest live albums of jazz clarinet on record, perhaps the finest in a small club atmosphere. This band would outstrip most current jazz groups for professional nuance, emotion, and depth.
To my knowledge, as of this writing, while some of the tracks may have been remastered and released on compilation albums, I don't think it has ever been reissued as an entire album. My hope is that it will be soon, along with all of the early Coral masterpieces.
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| Autographed Portrait of Pete Fountain (Eric Seddon Collection) |
