Allen Lowe and the Constant Sorrow Orchestra

Phillip Johnston/Greasy Chicken Orchestra
I Cakewalked with a Zombie
Earshift Music EAR 081

Replication and adaptation are the watchwords for these sessions which put a modern spin on Jazz history. Working with a variation of the New Orleans marching band, former New Yorker, now a Sydney resident, soprano saxophonist Phillip Johnston and his otherwise all Australian octet create a set of infectiously jocular performances that mix Classic Jazz tunes with Johnston originals. Working in Manhattan around the time Johnston led his Microscopic Sextet there, tenor/alto saxophonist Allen Lowe , who is now also an author and lecturer, leads a quartet interpreting a dozen of his originals, which play with variations on the Jazz tradition. “At a Baptist Meeting”, the 13th track swells the band to a nonet for a rendition which is as much dissident as Dixieland with the soloists using extended techniques never imagined in Trad Jazz.

Most of Johnston’s originals slide right into the variations on classic tunes which make up the rest of the disc. Mostly foot-tappers with round-robin soloing, Peter Dasent’s pumping, near-ragtime piano and two-beat pumps from drummer Nic Cecire are prominent throughout. Individually Tim Rollinson injects subtle guitar picking and sousaphonist James Greening moves from his usual brass-bass role for plunger riffs on the balladic “Longing”, while the slow-moving but not pedestrian arrangement of “Damp Rag” manages to update to the Swing Era initial trad sounds via guitar strokes, cascading piano textures and snorting breaks from baritone saxophonist Jim Loughnan.

Processional piano chugging and Cecire’s use of wood blocks and cowbells provide the established foundation upon which Johnston’s arrangements of 1920s standards rests. That means that his soprano saxophone vamps can snake over some of the riffs or reorient the performance from approximations of primitive group playing to suggestions of the Swing Era big band refinement. This happens on a track like Jelly Roll Morton’s “Frog-I-More Rag”, with a dancing sub theme and Tim Clarkson’s nasal tenor saxophone interjections. A similar transformation takes place on Duke Ellington’s “Awful Sad”. Playing on its Impressionistic coloring, its breezy elegance is emphasized with an elephant-in-ballet-slippers-like solo from Greening, who propels a line that’s both buzzy in a delicate in a way an earlier tubaist/bass players like Wellman Braud couldn’t have imagined.

Most straight-ahead players would definitely be bewildered by the musical prestidigitation practiced by Lowe as he segues through inferences to many genres while expanding bedrock themes. With Ray Suhy’s accomplished banjo and guitar prowess extending to the point that on tracks like “Declension” and “Old Country Rag” he can create mandolin-like slurred fingering plucks, hints of C&W enter the mix over Kresten Osgood’s drum rumbles and shuffles as the saxophonist harmonizes the theme. Overdubbing his guitar playing on “Cold Was the Night Dark Was the Ground” and “Blues for Unprepared Guitarist”, Lowe burlesques the improv-Metal pretension of some six-stringers, contrasting guitar flanges with heavily vibrated squeaks and smears on the latter, and adding a constipated guttural growl to his frails and clanks on the former.

In contrast Suhy’s multi-fingered delicacy on “Hymn for Her” allows him to play theme and variations almost at the same time with what sounds like a quote from “Jitterbug Waltz” slipped in at an opportune time. He can also reverse himself and with the drummer and bassist Alex Tremblay provide appropriate backing when Lowe replicates grit so that the saxophonist’s superfast smears slides and swallows invests tracks like “It’s the End” and “Full Moon Moan” with more propulsive flanges and stomping strokes noticeable than those with Metal affiliations.

Unlike the revivalists of every Jazz style from Trad to Bebop, Lowe and Johnson have created discs that bow to the tradition yet also extend and meld it with other genres for distinctive programs.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Zombie: 1. Zuzilla Strut 2. Grandpa’s Spells 3. Chant of the Weed 4. Everyone Deserves Everything All the Time 5. Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning 6. Potato Head Blues 7. Longing 8. Jazz Lips 9. My, What An Ugly Baby! 10. Awful Sad 11. Damp Rag 12. In A Mist 13. Baby Steps 14. Frog-I-More Rag 15. Spanish Swat

Personnel: Zombie: Phillip Johnston (soprano saxophone); Peter Farrar (alto saxophone); Tim Clarkson: tenor saxophone); Jim Loughnan (baritone saxophone); Peter Dasent (piano); Tim Rollinson (guitar, banjo); James Greening (sousaphone) and Nic Cecire (drums)

Track Listing: America: 1. Damnation 2. Cheatin’ My Heart 3. Poor Mourner’s Serenade 4. Cold Was the Night Dark Was the Ground# 5. Hymn for Her 6. It’s the End 7. Full Moon Moan 8. Blues in Shreds 9. Declension 10. Blues for Unprepared Guitarist# 11. Old Country Rag 12. Metallic Taste 13. At a Baptist Meeting*

Personnel: America: Randy Sandke (trumpet); Roswell Rudd, Ray Anderson (trombone); Darius Jones (alto saxophone); Allen Lowe (tenor, alto saxophones, guitar#); Lewis Porter (piano); Ray Suhy (guitar, banjo(; Alex Tremblay, Jessie Hautala* (bass); Kresten Osgood (drums); Jake Millett* (electronic drums)