Moses Allen Middle Class White Boy CD

Personnel: Mose Allison (acoustic & electronic piano); Joe Farrell (tenor saxophone, flute); Phil Upchurch (guitar); Putter Smith (bass); John Dentz (drums); Ron Powell (congas, percussion).
Recorded at Sage And Sound Studio, Los Angeles, California on Febrary 2 & 3, 1982. Includes liner notes by Mose Allison.
Personnel: Phil Upchurch (guitar); Joe Farrell (flute, tenor saxophone); Mose Allison (piano, electric piano); Putter Smith (bass instrument); John Dentz (drums); Ron Powell (conga drum, percussion).
Released in 1982, Middle Class White Boy was Mose Allison's first recording in six years, and his debut for the fledgling and relatively short-lived Elektra Musician label run by Bruce Lundvall. Allison is featured here in a sextet setting. His fellow front-line players are saxophonist Joe Farrell and guitarist Phil Upchurch. The set is a well-blended collection of originals and covers including Muddy Waters' "Rollin' Stone," and Duke Ellington's "Just a Lucky So and So." As is his trademark, Allison effortlessly blends jazz, backwoods blues, and Southern hipster jive in a heady brew of fantastic musicianship. His work on electric and acoustic piano here is as startling as ever and his songwriting is canny, wildly swinging, funny, and biting. The opener, "How Does It Feel to Be Good Looking," is a case in point, with a fantastic electric piano solo. The title track is a choogling shuffle that walks the line between blues and bop. "Back Down South" is a cooking bebop blues that pits Upchurch and Allison against one another in some startling contrapuntal interplay that's firmly in the groove. Through these 11 tracks, Allison shines and the band cooks. It's as welcome a comeback as one could hope for. ~ Thom Jurek
No one escaped the '80s without an embarrassing tale to tell. Fortunately, in Allison's case, it's a minor one. 1982's MIDDLE CLASS WHITE BOY stands up proudly next to the rest of Allison's catalog, with one fly in the ointment. Throughout the album, his customary piano is inexplicably replaced by a cheesy sounding electronic keyboard that sounds both endearingly quirky and irreparably out-of-place. That said, this is a nice combination of new Allison tunes ("I Don't Want Much," "I'm Nobody Today"), old Allison tunes (the unjustly obscure cosmic humor of "Hello There, Universe"), and covers ("Tennessee Waltz," Muddy Waters' "Rollin' Stone"). The album closes with the Allison gem "Kiddin' on the Square," a combination of the earnestness and prankster-ism essential to the Allison genius. If you can ignore the curious keyboard tones, there's much value to be found in MIDDLE CLASS WHITE BOY.