Saxophobia - Celebrating the Sax Craze of the 1920s

Sax-O-Trix, Valse Mazanetta; Saxophobia; Dans L’Orient; Valse Llewellyn; Kiss Me Again; Sax-O-Phun; Rubenola; Cloudy Days; Gloria; Canary Cottage-One Step; Danse Hongroise; You Forgot to Remember; Saxema; Valse Sonia; Saxarella; Valse Vanité.

Chad Smith saxophones; Mikaela Bennett voice; Lynette Wardle harp; Dalton Ridenhour piano; Sinfonia of London John Mills leader
John Wilson

Chandos CHSA 5390
chandos.net

I defy anyone not to start moving their legs in Charleston fashion with this seductive celebration of 1920s glamour. Nostalgia and a hearkening back to an age of nightclubs, novelty and no small amount of nerve.

There is a moment, early in the opening track, Sax-O-Trix, when you realise Chad Smith is not so much playing the saxophone as interrogating it. The virtuosity is immediate and slightly alarming — watch him perform, and you may find yourself short of breath on his behalf. Saxophobia, at a mere minute and forty-five seconds, packs in more mischief than albums three times its length, its knockabout energy conjuring the closing theme of a Benny Hill sketch, though played here with rather more technical bravado than Benny ever required of his cast.

This is an album that wears its scholarship lightly. Its real subject is Rudy Wiedoeft, the saxophone's great forgotten pioneer — a virtuoso clarinettist turned obsessive saxophonist who all but invented the instrument's vaudeville voice in 1920s America before the jazz age's brighter new stars swept him into obscurity. Smith, a Broadway veteran whose credits run from Star Wars to The Simpsons and whose collaborators range from Tony Bennett to Lady Gaga, has set out to restore him to the spotlight and succeeds handsomely.

The disc's emotional register shifts more than you might expect from an album built on novelty numbers and dance-craze energy. Soprano Mikaela Bennett brings real tenderness to You Forgot to Remember, sung with such warmth that one longs to take her up on the invitation of Kiss Me Again rather more literally than the concert hall allows. It is a reminder that sensuality, not just showmanship, runs through this repertoire.

Elsewhere, the colour comes from careful ensemble work. John Wilson's Sinfonia of London provides accompaniments of real intelligence — never merely deferential, always alert to the music's syncopated pulse. Canary Cottage – One Step, scored for violin, banjo, trombone, drums and piano, is sparkling and vivacious, its passagework tossed off with a nonchalance that belies the difficulty.

Alison Wardle's harp, meanwhile, casts its own particular spell: seductive in her own arrangement of Valse Sonia, and equally beguiling in the whirl of Danse Hongroise.

Throughout, Smith moves between alto and C-melody saxophones with an ear for tonal nuance and articulation that never feels showy for its own sake — every colour serves the period, not the player's ego. The premiere recording Cloudy Days is a particular delight, its wisp of melancholy-tinged whimsy summoning something closer to golden-age film scoring than 1920s dance-hall fare.

This is, in short, a feel-good record in the truest sense — one that asks nothing more of the listener than a willingness to smile and perhaps to Charleston a little in the process. Wiedoeft would, one suspects, be delighted.