[Dixielandjazz] NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH SON HOUSE

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

    *     * John Fordham 
    * The Guardian, Tuesday 3 May 2011 
    * Article history

There's a musicians' joke: if you want to make a million out of jazz, start with 

two million. It's not a theory that's been tested much because players with that 

kind of headstart don't show up often but Hugh Laurie, former star comic and now 

the highest-paid actor on US TV for his lead role in the medical series House, 
might be about to offer the moment of truth.
Laurie, a lifelong early-jazz and blues fan, triumphantly closed the 2011 
Cheltenham Jazz Festival backed by a punchy quintet dominated by the uninhibited 

Canadian guitarist Kevin Breit, and the material from his debut album, Let Them 
Talk. It was a very different notion of jazz from the mostly contemporary and 
often edgier variations that had shaped the six-day event.
But Laurie delivered it with a respect for long-gone originals of the art like 
Jelly Roll Morton, Huddie Ledbetter, Leroy Carr and JB Lenoir, a more than 
competent sideman's skills on piano and guitar, and an actor's instincts for the 

art of tribute without caricature in some fine vocals, that rekindled a music 
often abandoned to archivists and buffs.
"If I explode in a wet splash of ecstasy," Laurie initially warned the audience, 

"the gentlemen behind me will take care of all your musical needs."
They didn't need to but the music often reached critical temperatures just the 
same. The opener was a trad-jazzily adapted Thelonious Monk theme but only that 
and a piano and soprano sax interpretation of Summertime came close to 
contemporary notions of jazz.
A dramatic St James' Infirmary that began with delicate piano chords and became 
a roar in which Vincent Henry's tenor sax erupted out of chiming slide-guitar 
chords, a Huddie Ledbetter blues backed by Bright's balefully choppy rhythm, an 
eerie Joshua Fit The Battle of Jericho (backed only by ringing guitar sounds, 
tom-tom thumps and Laurie's stamping foot), and a devotedly patient Careless 
Love, all showed how determined Laurie was to make the focus the songs and not 
himself. James Booker's Let Them Talk and a Professor Longhair rocker for an 
encore, wound up a very unexpected tour de force.
Laurie's show contrasted sharply with most of the offerings on one of the UK's 
classiest and most eclectic jazz festivals but it was certainly a big noise to 
go out on, for an event full of eloquent ones.
In the sunshine on Sunday, jazz stereotypes of shadowy monochrome characters 
blowing saxes in cellars were dispelled by kids turning cartwheels on the grass, 

while Hendrix-like guitar chords in the distance ripped through ragged horn 
sections, tampering cheerfully with Strauss's Thus Spake Zarathustra, and the 
silver-haired, the rainbow-haired and the no-haired picked their way through 
marquees, sunbathers and bands.
Jamie Cullum, the festival's guest director, had wound up Sunday with a rare 
one-man show and his first gig since the birth of his and Sophie Dahl's daughter 

Lyra in March. "It's only the second time I've been out of the house since 
then," Cullum said wryly to an adoring audience. "And it's being simulcast in 75 

cinemas in six countries."
Over two sets in which he visibly unwound from a nervous start, Cullum rattled 
through originals, pop covers and standards, with a yearning account of 
Radiohead's High And Dry, and Fran Landesman's classic Spring Can Really Hang 
You Up The Most – riskily but successfully joining intimate balladry to 
beatboxing – the highlights.
Earlier in the day, 2010 Mercury Prize contender Kit Downes and his powerful 
sextet had explored Scandinavian folk songs, contemporary bebop, and anthemic 
contemporary blues, and former Brand New Heavies keyboardist Neil Cowley had 
mixed jackhammering rock-piano chords with slinky swing and the purrs of a 
string quartet.
Norwegian Tord Gustavsen, a very different hitmaker in his homeland for 
barely-struck acoustic music of tiny, trickling motifs, softly-brushed cymbals, 
quietly humming double-bass parts, then played to an awed, church-like 
atmosphere, to which his Jan Garbarek-like saxophonist Tore Brunborg was 
flawlessly attuned.
And, despite a very powerful UK and northern-European presence at Cheltenham, 
the Overtone Quartet – a supergroup compromising pianist Jason Moran, 
saxophonist Chris Potter, bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Eric Harland, 
rubbed home an unmistakable message about the enduringly muscular, and 
increasingly open-minded, lyricism of American jazz.
• This article was amended on 4 May 2011. The original referred to Canadian 
guitarist Kevin Bright. This has been corrected.