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Little Brother Montgomery's "Farro Street Jive" · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

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  This is Jed Disler and welcome to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano
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  recordings.
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  As you may know, I sometimes take a detour from my regular commentary about classical
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  piano recordings in order to talk about jazz, and I think it's really important to explore
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  the incredibly rich and diverse heritage of jazz piano on record.
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  I want to talk about a disc that has long held a special place in my affections and
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  in my collection ever since I first got hold of it on LP, I think when I was around 12
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  years old.
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  It came out on the Folkways label in 1968 and it features the American jazz boogie-woogie
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  and blues pianist and singer Little Brother Montgomery.
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  The title of the album is called Pharaoh Street Jive and I just love this album.
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  But let me tell you a little bit about Little Brother Montgomery because he's not very well
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  known today.
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  He was born Uriel Wilford Montgomery in 1906 and he lived until 1985.
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  He recorded a lot on 78s in the 30s and 40s and he spent most of his formative years in
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  Mississippi, but eventually he settled in Chicago in 1942, which was his home base for
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  the rest of his life, I believe.
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  He played in various groups and also appeared frequently as a soloist.
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  He's a hard musician to pigeonhole because although the boogie-woogie eight beats to
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  a bar in the left hand is prevalent in his playing, it's not done exclusively.
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  As a blues player, he's very idiomatic and authentic just as much as like Memphis Slim
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  or Roosevelt Sykes or Otis Spann, Champion Jack Dupree, these wonderful players.
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  But there's also this love of melody that comes out in his playing and he plays right
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  hand octaves with this kind of easy lope.
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  I don't know if I'm describing it that well, but he kind of reminds me of how Jelly Roll
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  Morton played ballads in those Library of Congress recordings.
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  If you are familiar with the traditional blues pianist Art Hodie's, you will hear something
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  of that perhaps in Little Brother Montgomery's work.
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  He's never clunky, he's never heavy, his music making just falls easily on the ear and he
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  always puts you in a good mood.
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  So this album, Farrows Street Jive has a title track which I think really demonstrates well
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  what I mean about the lightness of Montgomery's approach to boogie-woogie.
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  He fills in the spaces more through implication than statement.
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  And you think you're hearing more piano than you actually are.
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  And on slower numbers such as Alabama Bound, Little Brother Montgomery displays this really
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  genial vocal style that I think complements his piano playing wonderfully well.
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  And on St. Louis Blues, he sings out the themes sometimes in right hand octaves while the
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  left hand alternates between a steady slow stride bass and little melodic fills.
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  And it sounds very full, but it's actually quite economical.
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  Little Brother Montgomery's two-handed mastery I think is really self-contained and secure
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  and totally unpretentious.
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  And when you listen to his playing, you feel as if you were in the room right with him.
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  So this album, Farrows Street Jive, is available from Smithsonian Folkways Records.
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  It's a custom-made CD-R that you get with original cover art.
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  And you can order it from the link that I provide in this episode's description.
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  I should also say that sometimes when I have dinner guests and we're just chilling out
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  in the kitchen, I pop in the CD without saying anything about who's playing.
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  And invariably my guests ask, wow, who's that playing?
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  Who's that singing?
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  And when I tell them who it is, they respond like, Little Brother who?
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  That's Little Brother Montgomery.
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  This is Jed Disler, and thank you for tuning into the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast
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  guide to piano recordings.
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  Take good care.
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  Thank you so much.