Big Bad Voodoo Daddy – Louie Louie Louie (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 42:55 minutes | 853 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: HDTracks | Digital Booklet | © Savoy
“Louie Louie Louie” is Big Bad Voodoo Daddy’s eleventh studio album, and reveals the evolution of swing, jazz and popular music through the songs of Louis Armstrong, Louis Jordan and Louis Prima, three artist that revolutionized American music in the earliest days of New Orleans jazz and ragtime.
Although still largely associated with the ’90s neo-swing movement, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy have long outrun that moment’s MTV zeitgeist and spent the 2010s deepening their jazz roots. The past decade-and-a-half have found them branching out, exploring New Orleans blues, Cajun, and second-line traditions on 2003’s Save My Soul, and paying tribute to legendary Harlem bandleader Cab Calloway on 2009’s How Big Can You Get? In this spirit of reinvestigating their influences, the band’s 11th studio album, 2017’s urbane and upbeat Louie Louie Louie, finds them celebrating three of their biggest musical heroes: Louis Armstrong, Louis Prima. and Louis Jordan. Here, the band round up a nicely curated set of tunes popularized by the three “Louies” and inject them with their own zesty brand of jump blues. Some of the song choices are deliciously on the nose with cuts like Jordan’s “Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens,” Prima’s “Five Months, Two Weeks, Two Days,” and Jordan’s “Jack, You’re Dead!,” feeling like well-loved road covers the band have played hundreds of times. Others, especially Armstrong’s Herculean “Struttin’ with Some Barbecue” and the suavely refined “Basin Street Blues,” with their nuanced harmonies and tricky horn lines, vibrate with a sense of danger and ambition as if the band had dared themselves to make them their own. Thankfully, they do. Elsewhere, we get equally compelling takes on “Dinah,” “Choo Choo Ch’Boogie,” “Knock Me a Kiss,” and more. It’s also fun to hear the band put their own stamp on one of the biggest anthems of the neo-swing movement, Prima’s “Jump, Jive an’ Wail,” popularized in 1998 by the Brian Seltzer Orchestra. Still centered on lead singer/guitarist Scotty Morris, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy have settled into a warm, crisply delivered style of swing that’s studio savvy and precise while also full of in-the-moment improvisation and an overall live-sounding aesthetic. Helping to achieve this aesthetic is longtime pianist Joshua Levy, who supplied all the arrangements on Louie Louie Louie. Also impressive are bandmembers trumpeter Glen “The Kid” Marhevka, alto and tenor saxophonist Karl Hunter, and baritone saxophonist Andy Rowley, who all get plenty of room to solo. The result is an album that strikes a balance between Jazz at Lincoln Center-style adherence to tradition and dynamic, pop-informed bravura showmanship.
Tracklist:
01 – Dinah
02 – Oh, Marie
03 – Is You Is, Or Is You Ain’t My Baby?
04 – Jack, You’re Dead
05 – Whistle Stop
06 – Choo Choo Ch’Boogie
07 – Basin Street Blues
08 – Jump, Jive An’ Wail
09 – Knock Me A Kiss
10 – Struttin’ With Some Barbecue
11 – Five Months, Two Weeks, Two Days
12 – Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens
13 – When The Saints Go Marching In
Musicians:
Scotty Morris – lead vocals, guitar
Andy Rowley – baritone saxophone, vocals
Glen “The Kid” Marhevka – trumpet
Karl Hunter – saxophones and clarinet
Joshua Levy – piano
Dirk Shumaker – double bass, vocals
Kurt Sodergren – drums
Download: