Ray Parker, Swingin' Never Hurt Nobody

Switching styles is an integral part of my listening habits. Like my life, my blogs reflect the wide range of music I tend to pay attention to. Today is no exception, in that we are switching over to a slightly different style of music.

It's acoustic bassist Ray Parker with a drummer-less trio of Russell George on the violin and Jon Hart at the guitar, putting together a set of infectiously joyful swing tunes for Swingin' Never Hurt Nobody (self-released).

All three have very good facility and put it to fine use on this album of mostly standards. Swing is the thing from Django to Stuff Smith and beyond. These are players who quite clearly take delight working in the earlier style and they do so with a great deal of panache, charm, and skill.

Ray has a full-fledged, all-over approach to the bass and shows himself to good advantage as an integral part of this trio. Russell George and Jon Hart are no slouches on their instruments either, so all goes well.

A treat for the ears. Bravo!

Georg Breinschmid, Fire

Georg Breinschmid, firebrand contrabassist and bandleader, firebrand eclecticist extraordinaire, returns with a second offering of madcap doings, aptly titled Fire (Preiser Records 91203). It's a full CD of live and studio outings by two of his ensembles, plus a bonus EP disk with assorted added material.

There used to be a category in the record business, long ago, called "novelty." Now that isn't quite what this is--it's too musical, but there is a sense of humor and over-the-top exuberance to this music that makes it rather untypical.

Georg plays a LOT of contrabass here: slap bass swinging, arco thematics, and otherwise very extroverted bass wielding. There are two ensembles involved, as I mentioned above, both sans drums. Twelve Breinschmid originals are here, all over the place, as well as some dizzy-paced Humgarian folk tunes, middle-European ditties, polkas, watzes, sambas, all kinds of things.

Much of it has a hard-swinging, almost Hot Club sound (without the guitar), especially when Roman Janoska takes up the violin. The duos with trumpeter Thomas Gansch are opportunities for lots of playing, some humorous vocals, and an extension of Georg's repertoire to a kind of archaic cabaret thing.

It's not like anything else out there and it's filled with lots of fun. Certainly Georg's bass playing is of high interest but the whole program tickles with the unexpected, and manages to do so very musically. And when it's serious about its jazz, it's serious new swing.