1. I'm Shadowing You
2. Little Ingenue
3. Midnight Sun
4. Jeepers Creepers
5. Come Rain or Come Shine
6. The Bathtub Ran Over Again
7. Lazybones
8. Peter Piper
9. I Thought About You
10. At the Jazz Band Ball
11. Charade
12. Dream
13. Twilight World
14. Here Come the British
Daryl Sherman - Piano, vocals
Jerry Dodgion - Alto sax
Wycliffe Gordon - Trombone, vocals
Howard Alden - Guitar, banjo
Jay Leonhart - Bass, vocals
Chuck Redd - Drums, vibraphone
Barbara Carroll - Piano (track 9)
Marian McPartland - Piano (track 13)
It's so comforting to be right occasionally! My previous review of
a Daryl Sherman album - Guess
Who's in Town! - was spot-on in picking out the special qualities
of this singing pianist. For example, I said that "Daryl is unique,
particularly in the way she considers and savours every word of a
lyric, telling a story as if for the first time".
Daryl Sherman's respect for the words of a song is a vital element
in this album, which is a tribute to Johnny Mercer, one of the finest
lyricists in 20th-century music. Mercer supplied the words for more
than 1000 songs, collaborating with such composers as Jerome Kern,
Hoagy Carmichael, Harold Arlen and Henry Mancini. His words enhanced
such songs as That Old Black Magic, I'm Old Fashioned, Skylark,
Days of Wine and Roses and Moon River. So it is appropriate
that the centenary of Mercer's birth, in November 1909, should be
signalled by an album of songs he had a hand in.
My previous review also said that another winning feature of Daryl
Sherman's work is her "choice of material, ranging from the familiar
to the virtually unknown". That is undoubtedly true of this new
album, where familiar songs like Lazybones and Charade
rub shoulders with little-known numbers like Little Ingenue
and The Bathtub Ran Over Again. The latter is a wonderfully
wacky song about a woman letting the bath run over because she is
thinking about her boyfriend. Wycliffe Gordon makes the song a vocal
duet with Daryl and he adds a deliciously witty trombone solo. The
song was actually Johnny Mercer's very first recording under his own
name - with a jazz combo in 1934. Mercer was a good singer as well
as a lifelong devotee of jazz.
The opening song - I'm Shadowing You - underlines the comparison
between Daryl Sherman and Blossom Dearie, who co-wrote it with Johnny
Mercer. Daryl and Blossom both have little-girl voices and accompany
themselves with gently sensitive piano. Howard Alden supplies a nice
solo. In fact part of this album's appeal is the expertly sympathetic
playing of Daryl's fellow musicians.
Altoist Jerry Dodgion solos radiantly on the poignant Little Ingenue,
and Wycliffe Gordon's contributions are all of top quality, often
including plenty of humour. In Jeepers Creepers, Wycliffe's
trombone emits some horsey sounds, perhaps in remembrance of the song's
origin in a film where Louis Armstrong sings it to a horse! You can
see Daryl and Wycliffe performing the song as a duet on YouTube.
Daryl is brave to take on Lionel Hampton's chromatic Midnight
Sun but she manages to pitch its difficult intervals with reasonable
security. Chuck Redd's vibes solo evokes the spirit of Hampton, with
hints of Red Norvo. Other standout tracks include Johnny Mercer's
first collaboration with Hoagy Carmichael: Lazybones (which
Daryl prefixes with the verse); Peter Piper (which uses nursery
rhymes as the basis for a love song); At the Jazz Band Ball
(with a little-known lyric and Howard Alden supporting the period
feel with his banjo); and Dream, one of the songs for which
Mercer wrote the music as well as the words.
Pianists Barbara Carroll and Marian McPartland make guest appearances
on (respectively) I Thought About You and Twilight World.
The latter is yet another neglected song, co-written by Marian with
Johnny Mercer and here conjuring up a magical scene as the sun sets.
The album climaxes with an even rarer item: Here Come the British,
a satirical song which describes how the British have been shooting
guns at people for ages. Jay Leonhart and Wycliffe Gordon help out
with the vocals and Wycliffe starts his solo with an amazing downwards
glissando.
Some vocalists I find hard to take but I can take Daryl Sherman in
as many doses as she wishes to offer.
Tony Augarde
CD Reviews
Arbors Jazz ARCD 19388
