“Ain’t a man alive can shuck and jive better than Grandad
can!”
Unless, of course, we include Jimbo Mathus and his merry mix
of Squirrel Nut Zippers, who were kind enough to visit Houston a week or so
ago.
This here Grandad may not know a chord of music from a cord
of wood – that has something to do with sixth grade, Sister Perpetua and a
pitch pipe.
But he does notice when his toe starts to tappin’. That
discerning digit first happened upon the SNZ sound nearly 20 years ago on the
small slice of commercial radio that still housed jazz, jump blues and the
Great American Songbook.
The random radio offerings – from old-school DJ’s such as
Paul Berlin and Scott Arthur – introduced bands like the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies
and Brian Setzer Orchestra, spurring the never-ending discovery of numerous
others, from the Jive Aces and Bellevue Cadillac all the way to Straight No
Chaser and Zazu Zazz.
I even got to gush live and in person at Houston’s Toyota
Center when the Royal Crown Revue’s incomparable horn section performed with
Bette Midler during her aptly-billed “Kiss My Brass” tour along this path of
mine to musical discovery.
Just followin’ my toe.
As I recall, it was SNZ’s “Put a Lid on It” that was deemed
to exude enough sass and brass to fit the Classic Cool radio format … and the
vocal stylings of Katherine Whalen certainly stand out in any crowd.
Over those many years, I’ve stumbled upon and procured most
(perhaps all) of the band’s catalog. The “sound” features a variety of
string-play (guitar, bass, banjo, mandolin, fiddle, you name it – current fiddle
man Justin “Dr. Sick” Carr plays a saw on a couple of numbers) – accented nicely
by set of horn players plenty able to swing when the occasion arises, for
example “Got My Own Thing Now.”
Fittingly, the band’s irreverently clever lyrical wordplay
might best be displayed in the title of a bouncy instrumental called “The
Flight of the Passing Fancy.” And it certainly takes a little brass to revel in
the notion that “The Suits Are Picking up the Bill.”
Despite some apparent squabbling among the group’s original
members, Jimbo’s re-tooled unit – only he and percussion man Chris Phillips are originals – has deftly replicated the Zippers’ sound and feel. In particular
Ingrid Lucia, who had the toughest pair of boots to fill – Ms. Whalen’s voice
has been described somewhere as “Betty Boop Meets Billie Holliday.”
Ingrid’s got the Holliday end of that challenge covered
quite nicely (e.g. “Good Morning, Mr. Afternoon), but the Boop-ing that fits so
snugly into a tune like “Prince Nez” is unlike Lucia’s more subtle playfulness
in the iconic “Mr. Zoot Suit” or her gentle irreverence in a standard like “I’d
Rather Be in New Orleans" and some others.
In some video from early in the project, Ms. Lucia seemed an
artist still struggling with how best to allow her skill set to convey the
spirit of the original – a raised eye-brow seemed to accompany some of the
remarks in Comment sections.
Nonetheless, when a Houston date – a free show at an easily
accessible venue, to boot – was announced a while back …
… well, Put a Lid on It!
I’d decided not to seek out any more video, current or old.
Nor in the interim did I listen to any of the band’s music on CD.
I was gonna give my music-lovin’ toe an uninfluenced
opportunity to experience the sound of what my mind had begun to think of as
the “Zipper-trinos.”
Grandma, who at the last minute chose to tag along on the
trip, seemed amused by Kevin Russell’s Shinyribs show which ventured from James
Brown to David Bowie. But a tough week of third grade caught up with JJ during
the opening act and he curled up, head in my lap.
Perhaps abetted by the pleasingly icy chill of a cherry snow
cone on a muggy mid-September evening, Little Man perked up to the richer,
bouncier tone of the swing music, quite fittingly initiated with “Good Enough
for Grandad.” Ol’ Jimbo (or whoever laid out the playlist for what had been
advertised as an all-ages show) even seemed to position the cartoon that
accompanies the bands performing of “The Ghost of Stephen Foster” with the
young-un’s in mind, as my re-focused, eight-year-old running buddy responded to
it with a sincere “That was Cool!”
The virtuosity of Miss Ingrid, now comfortable with all this
material written for another voice, really shone through, most enjoyably to my
ear during her “Evening at LaFitte’s.”
As the nice lady from the Miller Outdoor Theater was reading
her Zipper-intro, I turned to Jayden Michael, sitting between his grandparents
and attending his first-ever concert, and said:
“Get ready, dude! One day a long time from now, when you
take your own grandson to a concert, you’ll be able to tell him about the time
your Grandma and Grandpa took you to see the craziest band you ever did see.
This is gonna be good.”
Our progeny just looked at me, but GG gave Popi a smile and
a nod.
“All the good times that we had,
They were good enough for Grandad,
They’re good enough for me.”
No comments:
Post a Comment