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ANNIE ROSS Loguerhythms él Records by Cherry Red ACMEM 274CD

1. Bellini

2. The Ballad of the Water and the Flame

3. The Ass' Song

4. The Liberal Man

5. Johnny

6. Sick Man

7. Things

8. He

9. Go to the Wall

10. The Ballad of the Ape and the Judge

11. The General

12. Western Ladies

13. Lithe Girl, Brown Girl

14. Steep Gloom Among Pine Trees

15. Sometimes It's Like You're Dead

16. Drunk as Drunk on Turpentine

17. Wings Whirr By Moon and Midnight

18. Can You Trap Shadows Like This?

19. Tonight, I Write Sadly

20. The Way You Look Tonight

21. I’m Beginning To Think You Care For Me

22. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

23. Everytime

24. The Song Is You

25. Jackie

26. The Time Was Right

27. I Want You to Be My Baby

Annie Ross – Vocals (tracks 1-12, 20-27)

Tony Kinsey – Drums (tracks 1-19)

Les Condon – Trumpet (tracks 1-19)

Pete King – Tenor sax (tracks 1-12)

Brian Brocklehurst – Bass (tracks 1-12)

Gordon Beck – Piano (tracks 1-12)

Roy Willox – Tenor sax, flute (tracks 1-12)

Malcolm Cecil – Bass (tracks 1-12)

Bill Le Sage – Vibes, piano (tracks 1-19)

Johnny Scott – Alto sax, flute (tracks 1-12)

Stanley Myers – Piano (tracks 1-12)

Ken Wray – Trombone (tracks 13-19)

Kenny Napper – Bass (tracks 13-19)

Milt Jackson – Vibes (tracks 20-23)

Blossom Dearie – Piano (tracks 20-23)

Percy Heath – Bass (tracks 20-23, 26)

Kenny Clarke – Drums (tracks 20-23)

Gigi Gryce – Arranger, conductor (tracks 24-25)

Jimmy Cleveland – Trombone (tracks 24-25)

Anthony Ortega – Alto sax (tracks 24-25)

Clifford Solomon – Tenor sax (tracks 24-25)

Lars Gullin - Baritone sax (tracks 24-25)

Quincy Jones – Piano (tracks 24-25)

Simon Brehm – Bass (tracks 24-25)

Alan Dawson - Drums (tracks 24-25)

Roger Ram Ramirez – Organ (track 26)

George Wallington – Piano (track 26)

Art Blakey – Drums (track 26)

Tony Crombie and his Orchestra (track 27)

There was a time in the 1950s and 1960s when people began to try fusing jazz with poetry. One of the foremost British experimenters was Christopher Logue, a maverick poet who was involved with Private Eye and London’s Royal Court Theatre. He wrote a pornographic novel as well as plays and numerous poems. Loguerhythms, consisting of a dozen of his sardonic poems, was recorded in 1962 at the Establishment Club in Soho, with music composed mostly by Stanley Myers and Tony Kinsey.

Annie Ross was the p[erfect vocalist to perform Loguerhythms. She had made her name as a member of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, a vocal team which specialised in vocalese, the art of putting words to pieces of jazz. She was therefore an expert in the difficult process of singing poems with jazz accompaniment. Christopher Logue’s poetry doesn’t always make it easy to deliver the words, as the lyrics often demand the ability to stretch words or even almost gabble them.

Yet Annie manages splendidly: conveying the pieces clearly and with plenty of style. It would still have been useful if the sleeve-notes had included the poems in full, so that the listener could study them more closely. Some tracks are more successful than others. For example, Johnny works well as a jazzy blues, while He is short but effectively ironic.

The first twelve tracks on this CD are from the original Loguerhythms album. The next seven tracks come from a 1959 EP called Red Bird, in which Logue recites poems from his collection Songs, backed by music written by Tony Kinsey and Bill Le Sage. The music is pleasantly melodic, but Logue doesn’t deliver the words as clearly as Annie Ross did, so some of the poems lose their impact. On my hi-fi, parts of track 16 and all of track 17 jump.

The CD is filled out with eight tracks recorded by Annie Ross between 1952 and 1955 with various jazz groups. They all illustrate Annie’s excellent singing, although I’m Beginning to Think You Care For Me is marred by the band adding a hideously tuneless vocal chorus. The Song is You is taken at a slow, seductive tempo, with accompaniment by the Gigi Gryce Orchestra. Annie herself composed Jackie and The Time Was Right . I Want You to Be My Baby is a typically tongue-twisting song by Jon Hendricks.

Altogether this is an interesting reissue, apart from occasional unfortunate glitches.

Tony Augarde
www.augardebooks.co.uk

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