[Dixielandjazz] John Pizzarelli reviewed

[Robert Ringwald]

Pizzarelli Superbly Mixes Jazz Old, New
by Peter Landsdowne
Worcester (Massachusetts) Telegram and Gazette, January 9, 2012
Jazz guitarist and singer John Pizzarelli has come a long way since he made his Worcester
debut some two decades ago at the late, lamented El Morocco restaurant's Nile Lounge
as part of the El's famed Monday night jazz series. Back then, Pizzarelli was a fresh-faced
jazz wannabe in his 20s who was perhaps best known as "Bucky Pizzarelli's kid," Bucky
being Bucky Pizzarelli, the legendary jazz guitarist who performed with everyone
from Benny Goodman to the Tonight Show band during the Johnny Carson years.
These days, John Pizzarelli has matured into a superb jazz guitarist in his own right
who also has a way with jazz vocals. Pizzarelli and his group (pianist Larry Fuller,
drummer Tony Tedesco, and bassist Martin Pizzarelli -- yes, he's John's brother)
appeared Saturday night at Mechanics Hall as part of Music Worcester Inc.'s 152nd
Worcester Music Festival.
Pizzarelli has a well-deserved reputation as a skilled interpreter of the Great American
Songbook. He proved as much at Mechanics Hall by opening with "Straighten Up and
Fly Right" and "Frim Fram Sauce," two vintage tunes first performed by Nat "King"
Cole, an acknowledged early influence on the guitarist-singer. An audience of close
to a thousand Pizzarelli fans applauded Pizzarelli's crisp and clean guitar solo
and also saved some applause for Fuller's rollicking piano solo.
The quartet caught fire on a romp on "Avalon," another vintage tune. Pizzarelli counted
off the song at a seemingly impossibly fast tempo that didn't hinder either his vocals
or his fleet guitar solo. An obviously inspired Fuller contributed a blockbuster
of a piano solo that made good use of chords voiced in octaves.
"I guess you can't play this song too early or too late," Pizzarelli said as he introduced
Frank Loesser's "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?" a perfect vehicle for Pizzarelli's
breathy tenor voice. As a singer, Pizzarelli is more of a crooner than a belter,
a fact that emerged on his whimsical approach to the Rodgers and Hart ditty "I Like
to Hear the Tune," a rarely heard song from 1938. Pizzarelli incorporated a few bars
of "Blue Moon" into his guitar solo, and then topped that with a quote from Charlie
Parker's "Ornithology," a bop standard based on the chord changes to "How High the
Moon."
Intended as a tribute to the pro football playoffs, Johnny Mercer's "Jamboree Jones,"
a song about a marching band clarinet player who inspires a football team to a winning
season, seemed to fall flat. The quartet quickly recovered on a fast version of George
Gershwin's "Lady Be Good" that featured Pizzarelli scat-singing in unison with the
notes of his fleet guitar solo.
A mellow medley of songs associated with Frank Sinatra grabbed the crowd as Pizzarelli
moved seamlessly from "You Make Me Feel So Young" to a loping version of "Witchcraft"
to an up-tempo outing on "Ring a Ding Ding" that had Pizzarelli inserting quotes
from Duke Ellington's "Rockin' in Rhythm" and "I'm Beginning to See the Light" that
presaged the Ellington medley that would end the second set.
Before that, Pizzarelli and his group played a selection from Double Exposure, an
album due out in May that attempts to fuse jazz and rock. In this case, the quartet
juxtaposed jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery's "Four on Six" with The Allman Brothers'
"In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" and somehow pulled it off.
A juxtaposition of another sort was one of the highlights of the aforementioned Duke
Ellington medley. This one melded the lyrics of Ellington's "Don't Get Around Much
Anymore" with the dolorous melody of Duke's "East St. Louis Toodle-oo." The crowd
also responded favorably to the quartet's versions of Ellington's "Satin Doll" and
"In a Mellotone."
The capper, though, was a no-holds-barred outing on Duke's "C Jam Blues" that featured
some fast and furious playing from both Pizzarelli and pianist Fuller, a standout
throughout the concert.
The audience responded with a standing ovation that elicited a beautifully rendered
medley of standards from the quartet as an encore, with Pizzarelli doing some fervent
singing on "The More I See You," "It Had to be You," Misty" and a heartfelt "As Time
Goes By." Pizzarelli pointed out that the Mechanics Hall gig was the quartet's first
engagement of the new year and that the group will soon be touring the United States,
South America, Europe, and Japan. Let's hope that Pizzarelli and his crew can make
it back to Worcester before the end of 2012.


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band
530/ 642-9551 Office
916/ 806-9551 Cell
Amateur (Ham) Radio K6YBV

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