Mose Allison

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Mose Allison
Mose Allison (crop).jpg
Background information
Birth name Mose John Allison, Jr.
Born (1927-11-11) November 11, 1927 (age 96)
Tippo, Mississippi, United States
Genres Jazz, jazz blues, blues
Instruments Piano, vocals, trumpet
Years active 1956–present
Website moseallison.com

Mose John Allison, Jr. (born November 11, 1927) is an American jazz blues pianist, singer and songwriter.

Early life

Allison was born outside Tippo, Mississippi, on his grandfather's farm, which was known as The Island "because Tippo Bayou encircles it."[1] He took piano lessons from age five,[2] picked cotton, played piano in grammar school and trumpet in high school,[3] and wrote his first song at age thirteen.[4][5]

Allison went to college at the University of Mississippi for a while, then enlisted in the U.S. Army for two years.[6] Shortly after mustering out, he enrolled at Louisiana State University, from which he graduated in 1952 with a Bachelor of Arts in English studies with a minor in philosophy.[7]

Career

In 1956 Allison moved to New York City and launched his jazz career performing with artists such as Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan, Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, and Phil Woods.[3] His debut album, Back Country Suite, was issued on the Prestige label in 1957. He formed his own trio in 1958 with Addison Farmer on bass and Nick Stabulas on drums.

It was not until 1963 that his record label allowed him to release an album entirely of vocals. Entitled Mose Allison Sings, it was a compilation consisting of songs from his previous Prestige albums that paid tribute to artists of the Mojo Triangle: Sonny Boy Williamson ("Eyesight to the Blind"), Jimmy Rogers ("That's All Right") and Willie Dixon ("The Seventh Son"). However, it was an original composition in the album that brought him the most attention – "Parchman Farm". For more than two decades, "Parchman Farm" was his most requested song. He dropped it from his playlist in the 1980s because some critics felt it was politically incorrect. Allison explained to Nine-O-One Network Magazine: "I don't do the cotton sack songs much anymore. You go to the Mississippi Delta and there are no cotton sacks. It's all machines and chemicals."[8]

Prestige Records tried to market Allison as a pop star, but Columbia Records and later Atlantic Records tried to market him as a blues artist. Because he sang blues, Jet magazine thought that he was black and wanted to interview him.[9]

Allison was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2006.

Allison's March 2010 album, The Way of the World, "marked his return to the recording studio after a 12-year absence".[10]

In 2012, Allison was honored with a blues marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail in his hometown of Tippo.[11] On January 14, 2013, Allison was honored as a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts at a ceremony at Lincoln Center in New York. The NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship is the nation's highest honor in jazz.[12]

Allison has written some 150 songs.[2] His own performances have been described as "delivered in a casual conversational way with a melodic southern accented tone that has a pitch and range ideally suited to his idiosyncratic phrasing, laconic approach and ironic sense of humour".[13]

Influence

Allison's music has influenced many blues and rock artists, including Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, Tom Waits, The Yardbirds, John Mayall, J. J. Cale, The Who (who made "Young Man Blues" a staple of their live performances), and Georgie Fame, who described him, at a concert at the Rose Theatre in London on 24 May 2013, as "more important than Bob Dylan". Blue Cheer also recorded a version of his song "Parchman Farm" on their debut album, as well as the band Cactus, featuring Carmine Appice and Tim Bogert in the very early seventies. The Yardbirds and The Misunderstood both recorded versions of his song "I'm Not Talking".

His song "Look Here" was covered by The Clash on their album Sandinista!. Leon Russell covered Allison's song "Smashed!" on his album Stop All That Jazz. Van Morrison released an album of his songs entitled Tell Me Something: The Songs of Mose Allison, and Elvis Costello recorded "Everybody's Cryin' Mercy" on his album Kojak Variety and "Your Mind Is on Vacation" on King of America (bonus tracks). Dani Klein of Belgian music act Vaya Con Dios recorded Mind on Vacation on the album Roots and Wings.

Frank Black of the Pixies has said that the song "Allison" from the album Bossanova is about Mose Allison.[14]

The film The Whole Nine Yards begins with Allison's song "I Don't Worry About a Thing" during the opening credits. Americana singer-songwriter Greg Brown wrote and performed the song "Mose Allison Played Here" on his 1997 album, Slant 6 Mind.

The Dutch musician Herman Brood recorded several of Allison's songs including: "Going to the City", "Smashed!", "Back on the Corner", and "Swinging Machine". Brood called his band the Wild Romance after a line in Allison's "Lost Mind", and in his live performance used a pastiche of different Allison songs in a number called "Blue".

Personal life

Mose married his wife Audre in 1949.[15] They live on Long Island, where they raised four children, including daughter Amy, a musician.[16] His wife has said that, when she first met him, "I could tell that he was someone who generated his own joy."[17] She has also said that "Mose has always paid attention to what is happening in the world, and has always read voraciously both past and present histories".[5]

Political and cultural views

Allison is reported to have strong views about "the domination of money over everything, the growing lack of empathy on the part of the powers-that-be for the population, wars and more wars, and an underlying hypocrisy in society"[5] and the arrogance of colonisers of the Americas.[15]

Discography

Compilations

  • 1963 : Mose Allison Sings (Prestige 7279)
  • 1965 : Down Home Piano (Prestige 7423)
  • 1965 : Mose Allison Plays for Lovers (Prestige 7446)
  • 1970 : The Best of Mose Allison (Atlantic) - released on CD in 1988 with 7 additional tracks
  • 1972(?) : Retrospective (Columbia)
  • 1979 : Ol' Devil Mose [compilation] (Prestige 24089)
  • 1994 : Allison Wonderland Anthology (Rhino Records)

As sideman

With Al Cohn

With Stan Getz

References

  1. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Feather, Leonard & Gitler, Ira (2007) The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz', Oxford University Press, p. 14.
  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Dickerson, James L. (2005). Mojo Triangle: Birthplace of Country, Blues, Jazz and Rock 'n' Roll (Schirmer Trade Books), pp. 110–112.
  8. ↑ 901 Interview (May 1987), Nine-O-One Network Magazine, p. 6.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ AlecEiffel.net Pixies Titles/Names. Retrieved on 2008-04-01. Archived 28 June 2007 at WebCite
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links


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