This may be as talented a lineup as to ever grace a tribute album and that’s quite a statement considering the many that we’ve heard. Consider these artists who pay tribute to the late jazz/blues great Mose Allison and then let the argument ensue – Taj Mahal, Robbie Fulks, Jackson Browne, The Tippo Allstars featuring Fiona Apple, Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite, Chrissie Hynde, Iggy Pop, Bonnie Raitt, Loudon Wainwright III, Richard Thompson, Peter Case, Dave and Phil Alvin, Anything Mose!, Frank Black, and Amy Allison with Elvis Costello and Mose. CD and LP packaging for If You’re Going to the City: A Tribute to Mose Allison will include a DVD copy of Paul Bernay’s 2005 documentary on Mose Allison titled Ever Since I Stole the Blues which was originally produced for the BBC.
As is the case with almost all tribute albums, not every track is consistently great but this one is leaps and bounds better than most. Allison was such a terrific songwriter that these 15 tracks, culled from a span of six decades, are completely different save one (“Nightclub”) than the other Allison tribute that may be familiar, 1996’s Tell Me Something: The Songs of Mose Allison from Van Morrison, Georgie Fame, and Ben Sidran with cameos from Mose himself. In the DVD Van sings a stunning version of the title track accompanied by Sidran and Fame. This tribute album contrasts with that one not just in song selection but in instrumentation too. It feels a bit jarring to hear Allison’s songs without many of his distinctive piano runs and improvisations. He had his own singular piano style – a little Monk, some blues, and whatever else. This one, on the other hand, is navigated mostly by guitar-toting singer-songwriters who bring a variety of styles, doing many of Allison’s most famous tunes, some like Taj Mahal and Iggy Pop basking in Allison’s signature wit. To be fair, we do hear piano on at least six tracks but little, if any, piano improvisation (like Sidran can do). All artists render reverently and for the most part, interestingly too.
Wainwright’s video for “Ever Since the World Ended” has already released as he pays back a favor since Allison covered his own “I’m Alright” on one of his recordings. The album was co-produced by Allison’s daughter, Amy, and musician/producer Don Heffington with help from producer/engineer and studio owner Sheldon Gomberg. The idea of gathering this outstanding cast took on more meaning, knowing they were playing for a worthy cause – Sweet Relief Musicians Fund that assists career musicians who are having economic struggles while facing illness, disability, or age-related problems. Gomberg is on the board for Sweet Relief so it all came together well.
A few words on the DVD. It’s a straightforward documentary with a rather dry narrator in BBC fashion. It does feature appearances from many British Isles musicians like Georgie Fame, Peter Townsend of The Who, Elvis Costello. Van Morrison and also Ben Sidran, Bonnie Raitt, Loudon Wainwright III, Keb’ Mo’, Frank Black as well as Joel Dorn from Atlantic Records. These four words really encapsulate Mose – “Hip, sardonic, world view.” Allison was a huge influence on the British rock scene with Townsend credited his “Young Man” as the inspiration for “My Generation.” The film documents his growing up in Tippo, MS, playing the clubs in the South, before heading to New York and immersing himself in its vibrant jazz scene in the early ‘50s. It also chronicles his change to improvisational piano playing in the late ‘60s and depicts several performances with his trio. Among some of Allison’s best lines in the film are that he always considered himself a “resistant strain,” never completely comfortable in the South nor a fan of all the conventional things offered in NYC. He speaks about life being a “balance of self-love and self-loathing.” Too much of either is not good.
The liners have segments from Michael Simmons and from his son, John Allison. Here is a passage from the former – “As for the songs, working musician Mose could write about mundane matters like getting paid for the gig (“Nightclub”), Or the country boy form Tippo could warn about the perils of urban life (“If You’re Going to the City”). But as daughter/set co-producer/singer-songwriter Amy Allison explains, her father “had a knack for distilling deep themes into simple potent lyrics.” Mose described sexual attraction in biochemical terminology (“Your Molecular Structure”), hedonism using anthropological metaphors (“Wild Man on the Loose”) and man’s inhumanity using Freudian psychiatry (“Monsters of the Id”). In the midst of the Information Age, Mose wrote a song about the brain’s limits in processing information (‘My Brain”). He was a peer of the so-called ‘sick” comics like Lenny Bruce and it showed. “I’m gonna be here for the rest of my life/And all I did was shoot my wife,” he bemoaned in “Parchman Farm.” In the gallows-humored “Don’t Worry About a Thing,” he ain’t worrying “Cuz I know nothing’s gonna be alright.”
John Allison’s piece has some interesting anecdotes as well, emphasizing Mose’s shunning of commerciality. It ends this way, “Finally, a reporter once asked Dad, “You were socially relevant before Bob Dylan, satirical before Randy Newman, and rude before Mick Jagger. How come you’re not a big star?” Dad replied, “Just Lucky I guess.” And on that note, take the opportunity, if you haven’t already explored the catalog of one of our greatest overlooked musicians. The tribute should serve as a catalyst.
