Jackie Allen

A Romantic Evening With – Live at the Rococo

Avant Bass

This live concert from renowned jazz vocalist Jackie Allen is available as a CD or with an accompanying Blu-ray disc. You may have already seen this as it has aired on several PBS outlets across the country. There’s a bit of a story behind this special show. Allen and husband, bassist Hans Strum, are originally from Chicago but have been living in Lincoln, Nebraska for several years. This is where the show was recorded. Lincoln is the home of the Lied Center, the leading art center in the state. Ann Chang, the Center’s artistic director, is a fan of Allen’s and approached her about doing a special romantic show around Valentine’s Day. The Lied Center was expanding its performance venues and had recently begun hosting shows at the Rococo Theater, an elegant, refurbished, historic performance space replete with marble and ornate chandeliers. It had all the right aural and visual elements for this project.

Allen brought her longtime recording band from Chicago to Lincoln for this date – Sturm on bass, pianist Ben Lewis, guitarist John Moulder, and percussionist Dane Richeson. Los Angeles-based woodwind master Bob Sheppard was flown in as well. Allen, as we’ve heard for three decades now, has one of the sultriest styles of any jazz vocalist, so this romantic material suits her well. What is more surprising though is her skill as an arranger, transforming some of these songs into almost unrecognizable territory. Here she presents, as she typically doe, a mix of musical styles, from classic jazz tunes to swinging fare  to soulful R&B, to lush ballads, sensual sambas, and well-known pop tunes.

The opening “What a Little Moonlight Can Do” has Allen trading verses with Ben Lewis’ stride piano. Her arrangement of Ellington/Strayhorn’s “Day Dream” has a buoyant, lilting feel and some unexpected moments. “Lazy Afternoon” brings in some haunting sounds, courtesy of the African mbira, also called the ‘thumb piano’ with Sheppard on flute and Sturm and Richeson adding to the African feel. Then we get a dramatic change in feel and instrumentation as the band engages in a funky version of Billy Preston’s “You Are So Beautiful” with Lewis’ organ as well as Moulder’s dazzling electric guitar excursion in a rendering that is remarkably different than the one made famous by Joe Cocker.

Allen then introduces Smokey Robinson’s “The Way You Do the Things You Do” with a quip –“what’s love without some Smokey Robinson?”  The tune proves to be a great vehicle for Sheppard’s aggressive tenor solo. The tongue-in-cheek lyrics to the Rogers and Hart standard “Everything I’ve Got” are tailor-made for Allen’s phrasing. She then turns to Paul Simon’s “Still Crazy After All These Years,” clearly putting her own stamp on it, opening with just voice and bass before the drums and Lewis, again on organ, join in.

One would guess that “My Funny Valentine: would be a staple in this kind of show but Allen doesn’t settle for the usual approach. Instead, she transforms it to a samba with Richeson playing the pandeiro, a type of Brazilian tambourine. Another requisite love song, Bacharach and David’s “This Girl’s In Love With You” takes on the most intimate tone in the set, enhanced by Moulder’s classical guitar technique on a nylon string guitar and Sheppard on flute. They close with “Nobody Does It Better,” a song extracted from the 1977 James Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me. This Marvin Hamlisch and Carol Bayer Sager tune is another infused with a Latin feel.  The song that makes it to top of most lists of the top romantic songs ever, so it is certainly an apropos closer.

Put this one on the next time you plan a romantic evening. Jackie Allen is just so emotive and sexy, especially in the company of these superb players, that you’ll have the perfect soundtrack. Maybe you’ll be lucky enough to have the video too.

• Jim Hynes