MOSE ALLISON SINGS – VERY RARE UK 1st PRESS STATESIDE LP – 1N/1N – 1964

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MOSE ALLISON SINGS– VERY RARE UK 1 st PRESS STATESIDE LP – 1N/1N – 1964 Mose Allison LP “Mose Allison Sings” 1st Press 33 1/3 R.P.M. MADE IN GT. BRITAIN Released on the Stateside Record Label E.M.I. Records Limited (A “Prestige” Recording) (P) 1964 SL 10106 Matrix: SRX 3209-1N SRX 3210-1N “When Mose Allison settled in New York in 1956, he became known in local circles as a basic, blues-rooted but modern oriented pianist who played solos that were effective in their simplicity. He played at private sessions, and then publicly with the groups of Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan, and Al Cohn-Zoot Sims. At the same time, Mose started recording on his own in a trio context. Eventually, he began appearing in clubs with the same format. With his trio, he revealed two other talents – trumpet playing and singing. This second talent has continued to grow until it is the most popular aspect of his presentation. Allison’s singing was once described by Bill Coss in the old ‘Metronome’ magazine as falling “somewhere between Hoagy Carmichael and Trummy Young”. This applies, in a certain way, to his sound, which is low-key, warm, and homey. His style itself in homey, too – Moss grew up in Tippo, Mississippi-Delta country and the rural blues of the South have been natural to him since his childhood. He became aware of such basic blues purveyors as Sonny Williamson and Tampa Red, and, later, more sophisticated musicians like Duke Ellington and Nat Cole. In between, there was Louis Armstrong, and afterwards, the modernists – Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, etc. The total result is a healthy combination of all the music Mose has absorbed, in a total expression that is at once individual and universal. This is the first time an all-vocal Mose Allison album has been issued, and it contains examples of the several types of material with which he comprises his repertoire: the blues; the “blues ballad”; and the ballad standard. In the first category, there is The Seventh Son , by Willie Dixon, one of Mose’s most requested numbers. It is a first-person narrative of a soothsayer and healer who can “heal the sick, raise the dead, and make little girls talk out of their head”. Eyesight to the Blind is Sonny Boy Williamson’s song about healing qualaties – this time a woman’s physical attributes. Ray Charles is represented by the plaintive Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand , which Allison heard him sing around 1951. Parchman Farm is Mose’s own creation in the blues genre he knows so well. Written in 1957, it is the tale of a man serving time on the farm at the Mississippi State Penitentiary. It is a work song lament fraught with ironic humour. If You Live , also by Mose, has the same back beat effect that is used in Parchman Farm , the title phrase, repeated throughout, is, according to Mose, “a local expression which means that you will get everything that’s coming to you in life, joy and trouble, that is – if you live”. More wry humour is heard in Mercy Dee Walton’s One Room Country Shack , the story of an isolated, lonely, but determined man. Young Man is an Allison composition from his Back Country Suite . Its original title was simply Blues , and it, too, contains a little down-home philosophy. The late Jimmie Rodgers is one of the revered Country & Western performers. That’s All Right is his, and it’s far closer to the blues than it is to a Country & Western type tune, especially in this Allison treatment. The “blues ballads” include I’ve Got A Right To Cry and Lost Mind . The first is by Joe Liggins and stems from the mid-Forties. In its own way it is a lot closer to Country & Western. The second is a Percy Mayfield song from the Fifties, in which Mose pleads convincingly for a female to help him get over the effects of “a devil with the face of an angel”, who was as “cruel and sweet as homemade sin”. In the standard ballad depa... read more

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