Mose Allison - Ramblin' with Mose

[kh1958]

"one of the patrons, who I assume was expecting the usual fare, had a rather different reaction, becoming increasingly agitated and shouting obscenities, until eventually being escorted out by the Austin police. "

wasn't Chuck living in Texas then?

Possibly, or he might have come to town to see Gene Ramey, who was living in Austin and occasionally playing in clubs at the time.

[medjuck]

The liner notes to the first Lp on which he appeared (a Cohn-Sims record) doesn't even mention that he sings. Just discusses him as a new find on piano. I've seen him several times over the decades (including once when he opened for Van Morrison) and quite enjoyed him but I do think The Back Country Suite period is his best as a composer. (I'm as tired of hearing "Your Mind is on Vacation " on the radio as I am of hearing Krall sing "Peel Me a Grape". )

Edited June 17, 2009 by medjuck

[Hot Ptah]

I saw Mose live once, in the late 1970s, and he put on a fine show. I can see what Chuck means about his turn away from his piano work of the 1950s. However, I will always have a soft spot for what he did after that. It was a gateway for me into blues and jazz. I immediately took to the lyrics, of songs such as "Your Mind Is On Vacation", "I Don't Worry About a Thing", "Your Molecular Structure", "Everybody's Crying Mercy". Recordings such as "Swingin' Machine" helped open my mind to jazz--those solos in the middle were easy to take, when surrounded by the lyrics. Compared to other gateways into jazz, Mose is less commercialized than many.

The engineering students on my dorm floor in college found the lyrics of "Your Molecular Structure" to be particularly humorous. It was some type of in-joke professional humor which only engineers could understand. When the record got to the part where Mose sings "thermodynamically you're getting to me", the engineering students would be literally laughing out loud, some of them doubling over with laughter. I could never understand it. One of the students told me that if I had gone through the entire journey of the engineering curriculum and had just taken the thermodynamics course, as they had, I would understand.

[jeffcrom]

In my post above, my "can't certainly understand" people who don't like the direction of Mose's career should have been "can certainly understand." I'm glad I'm not writing the manuals for nuclear subs.

[jlhoots]

Mose will be appearing in Albuquerque in mid-August.

I'm going to go.

[RDK]

I used to see Mose quite often when we were both living in/around San Diego back in the mid-80s. I particularly remember a free performance he did at the public library in Escondido or somewhere near there. He was always gigging like that, often with Bob Magnussen on bass iirc.

My favorite Mose performance, though, was seeing him open for Van Morrison at the Universal Ampitheater around 1990 or so. Obviously the crowd (several thousand) was there for Morrison and I suspect that few had ever heard of Mose Allison before that night... but he won them over famously.

One of my favorite lyrics ever: "Your mind is on vacation but your mouth is working overtime."

[Tom Storer]

Forgot to mention another essential Mose album, "Mose Alive!" It's available on the Collectables label, paired on the same CD with "I Don't Worry About a Thing."

"Mose Alive!" has his iconic version of "Parchman Farm" as well as a couple of great originals such as "Smashed" ("I'm smashed, just like a busted fender / Crashed, where can a man surrender?") and "Tell Me Something":

You say the world is mad

You say that you've been had

You don't like your part

In the floor show

You say it's all a bust

There's no one you can trust

Well, tell me something

That I don't know

You say the world's a mess

It's anybody's guess

As to who will deliver

That low blow

You suffer from the strain

You don't dig pain

Well, tell me something

That I don't know