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Johnny Adams: Blue Gardenia |
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New Orleans
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Wednesday, 18 January 2006 18:31 |
Johnny Adams
Blue Gardenia
Rounder Records
By John Sinclair
A giant on the New Orleans rhythm & blues scene since his first single, "I Won't Cry," made a modest national splash in 1959, Johnny Adams finally established his crossover credentials as a first-rate jazz singer in 1993 with Good Morning Heartache, his sixth album for Rounder Records.
A masterful collection of jazz standards, arranged and conducted by Wardell Quezergue--"the Creole Beethoven"--Good Morning Heartache brought Johnny's deeply soulful vocal stylings and impeccable musical taste to the attention of jazz radio programmers across the country.
Widespread airplay followed and almost magically a new generation of Johnny Adams fans sprang into being, entranced by his rich, mellifluous voice and deep rhythmic intelligence and enthralled by his fresh approach to well-worn chestnuts like "Come Rain Or Come Shine," "But Not For Me," and "You Don't Know What Love Is."
"Well," Johnny Adams told this writer last year on the occasion of Good Morning Heartache's release, "all the albums I've recorded with Rounder always get played on the jazz stations, because I usually have one or two pieces on the album which sound like jazz one way or another.
"But we've had in mind to do a full-scale jazz project for a long time, you know. I always thought it might be too late to put out an album of jazz tunes, but it's some pretty good old standards that Scott came up with, and I love the way they came out."
Now, by popular demand, and certainly in full accord with the singer's own wishes, we have the thrilling second chapter of Johnny's new jazz vocal book to experience and enjoy--a heady concoction of revivified standards, rediscovered obscurities, and bright new tunes performed by several small ensembles assembled by producer Scott Billington expressly for this series of recordings.
"I'm really excited about this project," Billington enthuses, "because, whether he knows it or not, Johnny broke a lot of barriers with this record. We got into some different things for Johny on this album--sometimes I can't believe how much he surprises me, even after working with him for so many years.
"Basically, I tried to create different small-group settings for Johnny that gave him all the space and harmony he needed to do what he does best," Scott explains. "This album is really about space as much as any other musical value."
Accordingly, the program opens with the singer accompanied only by the sympathetic piano of his friend Harry Connick Jr. for a haunting reading of "Blue Gardenia," a beautiful song associated with the great Dinah Washington.
"It was great to see Johnny and Harry work together on their duets," Billington remembers. "Johnny had contributed guest vocals to a couple of Harry's projects, including his Christmas album, and Harry returned the favor by playing for Johnny's new record."
The pianist returns later in the set to prompt Johnny's exhilarating delivery of the exuberant show tune "A Lot of Living To Do," a rollicking performance artfully tinged with the singer's trademark wistfulness.
"I had often imagined Johnny's voice accompanied only by acoustic guitar and acoustic bass," Scott says, "and I love the tracks we did with Steve Masakowski and Jim Singleton."
Punctuated by the congas of Michael Skinkus, Adams utilizes this spare acoustic trio to breathe new life into Cole Porter's timeless "Love for Sale," and to introduce a heretofore unheard Doc Pomus-Mac Rebennack opus, "Dreams Must Be Going Out Of Style."
"Another thing I was very happy about," Billington concludes, "was the chance to cut some more Doc Pomus songs. We had tried to work up an arrangement of 'Dreams Must Be Going Out of Style' for The Real Me album, but it never got off the ground. This is one of my favorite unrecorded Doc songs, and I'm ecstatic to have gotten this version on tape."
Adams and Singleton are joined by a long-time Johnny Adams favorite, the legendary tenor saxophonist Houston Person, fronting a jazz quartet with pianist David Torkanowsky and the impeccable Shannon Powell on drums for three heartfelt ballads: the standards "I Cover The Waterfront" and "Willow Weep For Me, " and a Five Keys song, "The Verdict," here thankfully rescued from the ineffable dustbin of history.
Johnny's jazzy rhythm & blues side of things is taken care of by an ensemble featuring Torkanowsky, guitarist Carl LeBlanc, Chris Severin on electric six-string bass, drummer Billy Kilson, and Skinkus on congas. They're augmented by Tony Dagradi's soprano saxophone for a definitive Johnny Adams blues outing on "Down That Lonely Lonely Road," a composition by the late New Orleans drummer, James Black, which makes for a perfect mating of song and singer.
Johnny's known by his friends as a closet guitarist who practices constantly at his garage studio in Baton Rouge but never plays his beloved instrument in public. Here, at long last, he unveils his lead guitar skills on another splendid Doc Pomus-Mac Rebennack number, "You Always Knew Me Better."
A third Doc-Mac song, the well-known urban anthem "City Lights," even finds Billington sneaking his harmonica into the mix to fine effect as Johnny interprets a great song by one of his favorite composers. Adams previously paid lavish tribute to Pomus with an entire album of Doc's compositions, the 1991 Rounder release The Real Me: Johnny Adams Sings Doc Pomus.
The full treatment is afforded the Ken Hirsch-Hal David favorite, "Come Home to Love," with Anthony R. Brown brought in on lead guitar and an all-star vocal quartet--Tara Darnell, Charles Elam III, Pamela Landrum, & Earl J. Smith Jr.--adding backing vocals behind Johnny's soulful excursion into the heart of this pop-soul song. Even Ultrasonic Studios engineer David Farrell gets in on the musical action with a taste of added percussion.
The happy and extremely relaxed nature of these sessions is completely revealed on the closing number, an impromptu little ditty improvised by Johnny, Jimmy Singleton and Shannon Powell titled "Talk About Midnight (We Gotta Wait 'Til Seven PM...)" or, alternately, "African Food"--a paean to the pleasures of the homeland cuisine to be found at a certain restaurant that, alas, wouldn't open until seven o'clock in the evening.
So concludes Johnny Adams' second jazz-focused album, a wonderfully satisfying collection of top-flight music that underscores the singer's new-found reputation as a moving interpreter of jazz standards and a swinging purveyor of funk-flavored pop tunes who has finally found a place in the world of contemporary radio.
For his new listeners, the 62-year-old veteran of the New Orleans rhythm & blues wars comes to their ears as a rising jazz vocal star from who-knows-where. But Johnny Adams has trod a long and arduous road to arrive at his current destination, and history demands at least a brief recounting of the saga.
Born Laten John Adams on January 5, 1932 and raised in the Hollygrove section of uptown New Orleans, Johnny started singing with neighborhood gospel quartets in the late 1940s.
A neighbor, songwriter Dorothy LaBostrie ("Tutti Frutti," "Rich Woman," "Don't Mess With My Man"), heard him singing around the house and convinced him to record one of her secular compositions, "Oh Why."
The song was quickly produced by an 18-year-old Mac Rebennack for Ric Records in 1959. Retitled "I Won't Cry," Johnny's first 45 was an immediate local and regional hit and launched a recording and performing career which has kept him working for the past 35 years.
Dubbed "The Tan Canary" by deejay Tex Stevens, Johnny has long been regarded by peers and devotees alike as one of the finest singers the city has ever produced. "I would have to say," the legendary Cosimo Matassa once told Jeff Hannusch, "that Johnny Adams is one of the greatest singers of all time."
Adams' vast personal catalog of recordings released by Ric, Ron, Watch, Pacemaker, Smash, Scram, SSS International, Chelsea, Atlantic, JB's Records, Hep'Me, Ariola, Paid, and--since 1983--Rounder Records, reveals his utter mastery of the blues, R&B, gospel, country & western, pop, soul and jazz idioms.
After many years of performing in tiny neighborhood joints, local nightspots like Dorothy's Medallion Lounge and Mason's World, and a succession of small-town clubs on the out-state "Sugarcane Circuit," Johnny's association with Rounder Records led him to featured spots in college bars, nightclubs and festivals throughout America and around the world.
New Orleans audiences now consider themselves fortunate to have the opportunity to see and hear the Tan Canary locally between his virtually unending road trips, which are as likely to find him in England, Europe and Japan as in Boston, New York, San Francisco or Detroit.
Since the inception of his extremely fruitful association with producer Scott Billington, Johnny has cut five artistically satisfying but commercially unrewarded sets of soulful rhythm & blues, plus the jazz-oriented album released last year.
The first three--From The Heart, After Dark, and Room With a View of the Blues--feature his working band of the early 80s, a tight, pulsating unit led by guitarist Walter 'Wolfman' Washington and augmented in the studio by extra horns and keyboards.
An anthology of his great 1959-63 singles for Ric and Ron titled I Won't Cry came next, followed by two tasty studio projects devoted to the works of composers Percy Mayfield (Walking on a Tightrope) and Doc Pomus (The Real Me).
"Walking on a Tightrope, man, that was a great record to do," Johnny told this writer. "All the songs were good because they are worldly songs, something-he-would-know-about songs, you-just-sit-and-look-around songs that pertain to the real thing.
"And, you know, before Doc passed I had made up my mind--instead of doing one or two songs on the album while you're the artist, why not do a whole album of songs by the same composer?
"Between Doc and Mac [Rebennack] we had some good songs together--'The Real Me' is a very good song, but my favorite is 'One More Time.' I love that song. And 'A World I Never Made'--oh man, that was a great song.
"You know, sometimes, man, you sing either one of those songs and look at the expressions on people's faces--you stand up there and look at people in the audience and you can hear their cigarette ashes hit the floor. It makes you feel good sometimes, you know?"
The consummate singer's singer, Johnny Adams has waited a long, long time to receive his due. And now that people are really starting to pay attention to his fully-realized vocal artistry, Johnny is looking forward to his sunset years with sort of a bittersweet eye.
"It's really difficult to have to keep working so hard and traveling all the time," Johnny sighs. "I can see going through with this for another 5 or 6 years if I can, but it's just so much you can do after a certain time.
"I keep telling myself that when the time comes when I can't enjoy what I'm doing, I'll stop. Because I don't want to be out there, 75 or 80 years old, you know, still trying to get somebody to feel something that you don't feel anymore.
"Lots of guys just go until they can't go anymore, but I would rather have people remember me from when I sang with a lot of inner soul and feeling and spirit."
Yeah, Johnny--all they have to do is hear "Blue Gardenia" and the rest of this lovely collection, and they'll have only the warmest possible memories of one of the finest singers of our time: the great Johnny Adams.
--New Orleans
October 15, 1994
Poet/journalist John Sinclair hosts the "New Orleans Music Show" and "Blues & Roots" programs for WWOZ Radio New Orleans and contributes a monthly column, "Crescent City Bounce," to OffBeat, the New Orleans music magazine.
(c) 1994, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
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