Press Release for Mose Allison Tribute show – 16 November, 2017: Georgia Straight Jazz Society weekly Thursday Jazz Show @ The Avalanche Bar & Grill – Courtenay, BC
Mose Allison was unique in the world of jazz. His vocal style was influenced by Nat Cole, Louis Jordan and blues man Charles Brown, his piano playing by the likes of John Lewis and Thelonious Monk. He performed with the jazz greats Stan Getz, Al Cohn, Zoot Sims and Gerry Mulligan to name a few. But he never lost his love of the blues and boogie woogie he heard as a young man growing up on the Mississippi delta.
Mose wrote songs that straddled the blues/jazz divide. His lyrics are often funny, profound and always entertaining. His influence spread well beyond the jazz world. Bonny Raitt, Van Morrison, John Mayall all recorded his songs. Time Out, the major British entertainment weekly, praised Mose: “Mose Allison’s popularity in the UK dates from the ‘60s, when his mixture of Delta-born blues feel and his gift for writing a song with a sting in the tail made him a prime source of inspiration for the UK’s new generation of blues/rock artists. Not just name-checked but lionized by the likes of Pete Townshend, Jack Bruce, Brian Auger and Georgie Fame, he became British rock’s most popular jazz musician. His piano style is notable for its strange mixture of classical-influenced sophistication and blues-based intimacy, and there’s still none like him with a lyric.”
In 2013 Mose was awarded the NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship (the highest American honor bestowed on jazz artists).
Mose passed away at 89 in November 2016, so it’s fitting that this November 16th, the Ralph Barrat Group presents “Mose Lives!” a Tribute To Mose Allison. Ralph (piano & vocal), Rick Husband (guitar), James Lithgow (acoustic bass) , and Neil Clark (drums) echo Allison’s music in a respectful and fun retrospective of the songs he wrote and the standards that he loved to play. The RBG presented “Mose Lives!” initially in December 2016 followed by a mainstage show at the Vancouver Island Musicfest in July 2016.