Hot Club Of Detroit Night Town CD

Personnel: Evan Perri (guitar); Paul Brady (steel guitar, nylon-string guitar); Julien Labro (accordion); Carl Cafagna (soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone); Shannon Wade (upright bass).
Audio Mixer: Todd Whitelock.
Liner Note Author: Howard Alden.
Recording information: Lava Room Recording Studios, Clevland, OH.
Director: Maria Ehrenreich.
Photographer: Cybelle Codish.
Unknown Contributor Role: Evan Perri.
Arrangers: Julien Labro; Paul Brady.
While the legendary Belgian jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt might not be a household word, his influence extends far beyond his 1930s and `40s heyday. Many jazz musicians (along with eclectics David Grisman and John Jorgenson) have been influenced directly or indirectly by his unique six-string style and his synthesis of Swing-era jazz with Central European folk, gypsy, and pop sounds. The Hot Club of Detroit pays direct tribute to Django without coming off as unoriginal or retro. Basically acoustic, the HCD have an arsenal of guitars, accordion, sax, clarinet, and bass, and NIGHT TOWN is an inspired mix of standards and originals performed with plenty of jovial, earnest swing and old-school gentility. There are post-Django influences as well, such as the pre-electric cool style of Miles Davis ("Seven Steps To Heaven").
On Night Town, the Hot Club of Detroit's sophomore effort for Mack Avenue Records, there is a sound that offers pure delight for jazz lovers and, by the same token, one of dread for the Gypsy jazz purist. That sound begins at the two-second mark of the opening cut on this excellent set. The tune is the old standard "I Want to Be Happy," and this version of it was inspired not by Django Reinhardt, but by a recording of Stan Getz playing with the Oscar Peterson Trio. It is the sound of a tenor saxophone (played by Carl Cafagna) evoking a momentary post-bop line and moving in a very straight path from here to there, accompanied by Julien Labro's button accordion, Shannon Wade's upright bass, and the guitars of Evan Perri and Paul Brady. The tune moves in short order from fleeting post-bop into the center of the action where it becomes a breezy, tough, but celebratory hybrid of Gypsy swing, French chanson, and bop. It is a startling, even breathless, even heady way to open an album, but through 15 tracks, despite the mood changes, tempo shifts, dynamic ranges, and advanced harmonic palette, the Hot Club of Detroit never let up. Of course, this Hot Club is not now, nor has it ever been, a purist group. The band's interest in Reinhardt and his burning, exuberant Gypsy brand of swinging jazz has always been serious, but mere revivalism is not the aim. These cats are jazz musicians first and foremost and the music they make, whether directly written or previously recorded by him or not, is filtered through their collective ability as jazzmen -- in arrangement, tempo, harmony, and yes, swing. After all, the word Detroit is in their name.
In addition to "I Want to Be Happy," there is a highly original reading of Miles Davis' classic "Seven Steps to Heaven," with the front line led by Labro's accordion and Cafagna's tenor. Wade's bassline pace is breezy and taut, the way Perri and Brady interact with the front-line soloists is startling, and the way Cafagna's hard bopping knotty solo touches on Sonny Rollins via Coleman Hawkins is brilliant. The underscoring of Miles' manner of using an Eastern mode in the theme is a nice touch to boot. For those who like their Gypsy swing a little closer to home, that's here in spades in Reinhardt's "Valse a Rosenthal," "Speevy," and the single "Django's Monkey," but everything here is worthwhile -- whoever heard of a swing reading of Gene "Jug" Ammons and Sonny Stitt's "Blues Up and Down" or a backwards evocation of New Orleans via the European swing era and hard bop as exists in this version of Jelly Roll Morton's "Sweet Substitute"? Right, nowhere but here. The originals are also worth noting (and one wishes they werDown Beat (p.73) - 3.5 stars out of 5 -- "[O]n NIGHT TOWN, the HCOD has dropped clarinet and added a mainstream jazz saxophone to present a commendable program covering old and new Gypsy swing numbers, American jazz standards and French song miscellanea."
JazzTimes (p.86) - "[A] delectable mix of 15 originals, standards and suprises with an authenticity and excitement that transport the listener to 1930s France."