Blue For You
Norwegian Wood
Views from the Quayside, Slightly Intoxicated
It’s Alright With Me
It Worries Me
Lush Life
Moving
There Must Be Something Out There
I’ll Never Be the Same
You Go To My Head
Show Me The Way
You Do Something To Me
Multicoloured Misery
Kevin Fitzsimmons (vocals): Steve Fishwick (trumpet); Alex Garnett (tenor sax); Gareth Lockrane (flutes); Derek Nash (alto and tenor saxes): Leon Greening
(piano. Fender Rhodes): Dominic Howles (bass); Matt Fishwick (drums)
Recorded Cowshed Studio, London, 2013 [54:46]
English singer Kevin Fitzsimmons has a dapper cut about him. His album sports 13 tracks, five of them his own or co-compositions, and the remainder shows a
catholic awareness of repertoire, indeed styles - Matty Malneck and Paul Weller, Lennon and McCartney and Cole Porter. It’s not too genre-hopping but it
shows a pleasing security in tune selection.
He reminds me sometimes of Georgie Fame, most pressingly so on Blue for You where the Fender of Leon Greening is prominent and where Derek Nash
blows a hard, fearless alto. There’s more Fame at work in You Do Something To Me, where the ethos is of a Fame-like stroller.Norwegian Wood is taken at an easy swinging tempo and his own picture postcard slice-of-lifeViews from the Quayside, Slightly Intoxicated gets a genially mainstream workout, the cogs of his band working tightly. Cole Porter’s It’s Alright With Me gets a slightly updated feel, and here the vibe is more Curtis Stigers than anyone, though it’s true that Fitzsimmons lacks
Stigers’s lyric intimacy and rich self-awareness. Yet with just rhythm backing he unveils a confidential, conversational Lush Life where precise
articulation does a lot of good work for him, and where Greening’s piano is a tremendous support.
His own There Must Be Something Out There starts Gershwinesquely and turns into a springy swinger, albeit the lyrics aren’t in Ira Gershwin’s
league of wit. That old standby I’ll Never Be the Same is taken at a fast lick and features yet another good flute solo from the adaptable Gareth
Lockrane. Fitzsimmons alters note values in You Go To My Head but these substitutions, though occasionally startling, work well in the context. He
has the confidence to end with another self-penned number, credited – to be accurate – jointly to himself and Derek Nash: Multicoloured Misery. He
is doubly confident because of its relatively slow tempo. It would have been easier to have ended on a fast swinging high – easier, but not necessarily
better.
Jonathan Woolf
CD Reviews
JAZZ WURX JWR011CD
