Russell Malone and Tammy McCann Serve Up ‘Les and More’

Russell Malone and Tammy McCann‘An Evening of Les Paul and Mary Ford’Dizzy’s Club, Through August 2 The guitarist Russell Malone and the singer Tammy McCann are in the middle of a four-show/two-night run at Dizzy’s Club. The billing seems to be as equal as they can make it: Mr. Malone’s name comes first, but it’s Ms. McCann’s picture that is on display at Jazz at Lincoln Center. The website bills the program as “an evening of Les Paul and Mary Ford,” and Mr. Malone informed us in his opening speech that they have performed this program previously, in Chicago, Ms. McCann’s hometown. Yet as he also admits, only a portion of the show comes from the repertoire of the Paul-Ford combination; the rest, he told us, is just things they like to play. I can’t imagine that anybody in the house was disappointed, and, within a few numbers I had even forgotten that this was the ostensible point of the evening. The two stars are so strong individually, and even more so together, that it hardly mattered. Still, having an archetypical guitarist-singer team — actually both Paul and Ford sang as well as played, but Paul mostly played and Ford mostly sang — as a basic template helped to give the program something of a point of departure. Thus, with typical humor, Mr. Malone informed us that his title for the show is “Les and More” When he introduced the rhythm section, which consisted of pianist Rick Germanson, bassist Vince Dupont, and drummer Neal Smith, he ended with, “And for those of you who don’t know me, my name is John Pizzarelli” — borrowing a leaf from the book of the late Sarah Vaughan, who made a point to introduce herself as Della Reese. Still, the reference to Mr. Pizzarelli was a relevant one for me, at least, since Messrs. Malone and Pizzarelli are my two favorite living guitarists. They don’t play anything like each other, but they have such a similar sense of humor that if they ever were to do a two-guitar show — not a bad idea, now that I mention it — there would be so many wisecracks and one-liners zinging around the room that they might never get around to the actual playing. Mr. Malone started the evening with a funky, major-key blues by the late Mulgrew Miller, “Soul-Leo.” The piece had a vibe similar to Grant Green’s classic Blue Note albums of the 1960s, especially in the ensemble, and the way the pianist and guitarist lock together, though Mr. Malone’s playing wasn’t specifically derivative of the late Grant Green.Two more jazz standards followed, “Moon Glow” and “Sweet Georgia Brown.” “Moon Glow” came from Paul’s teaming with Chet Atkins on the classic 1976 duo album “Chester and Lester,” and served to remind us how Paul was a giant in virtually every area of vernacular American music: jazz, country, pop, rock. Mr. Germanson soloed with a lilting quality, appropriately for a song about dreams floating through the air. “Georgia,” perhaps a nod to Mr. Malone’s home state, captured a late-1960s quasi-Latin boogaloo vibe. When Ms. McCann took to the stage, the bulk of her numbers were from the Les-Mary catalog but, to their credit, this guitar-voice duo didn’t try to replicate the original team’s groundbreaking and breathlessly complex multi-tracked studio constructs. “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby” used the device of spelling out the last word, which I associate with Ella Fitzgerald. I expected that Ella would be the inspiration for “Lullaby of Birdland,” but the overall shape of the piece, which began with Ms. McCann accompanied only by Mr. DuPont, seemed more directly informed by Ms. McCann’s fellow Chicagoan, Mel Tormé.The two followed with an admirably spare rendition of the early blues ballad, “Am I Blue,” which Ms. McCann described as being the result of study at “The University of Von Freeman,” referring to the iconic tenor saxophonist and mentor of many a Windy City jazz musician. They ended with a bouncy “How High the Moon,” the jazz standard that was also a blockbuster no. 1 hit for the Les-Mary combo; Mr. Malone launched it with Les Paul’s famous intro. If there was one complaint, it’s that the early set, at 60 minutes, was much too short. If you go tonight, I encourage waiting for the second show — spend the “intermission” gazing out of Dizzy’s famous panoramic windows. I’m tempted to go back; it’s impossible to get enough of this duo, which is, as Mr. Malone memorably described his partner, “Fine as wine and frisky as whisky.”

Russell Malone and Tammy McCann Serve Up ‘Les and More’

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