"Some Other Blues On Livia Records" - Louis Stewart and Noel Kelehan

 © Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

SOME OTHER BLUES features 8 standards, including the title track by John Coltrane, and an original ballad from Noel Kelehan. The CD includes a12-page booklet with sleeve notes by former Louis Stewart bassist and educator, Ronan Guilfoyle, and a trove of previously unseen photographs. Catalog #: LRDC2301 Format: Download and CD vinyl @ later date) Release Date: 26th May 2023.

SOME OTHER BLUES [Livia Records LRDC 2301] is a major release from Irish guitar giant Louis Stewart and his friend and collaborator, pianist Noel Kelehan (pronounced “keel-a-han"). This Previously unreleased gem reinforces Louis Stewart’s reputation and reveals Noel Kelehan, whose Bill Evans-like playing wasn't widely known.

It’s not often that a Jazz musician has a defunct label revived expressly for the purpose for which it was originally intended - that of featuring his music - especially if he happens to be an Irish Jazz musician who spent most of his career in his native land and the neighboring UK.

Furthermore, it’s even rarer that such an undertaking would be the source of so much national pride.

Enter guitarist Louis Stewart, Dermot Rogers and Livia Records - all reflective of the pride of the Irish.

The details about the relationship between Louis, Dermot and Livia are described below in Press Releases from Amanda Bloom at Crossover Media and Livia Records, so I’ll just add my comments as an introduction to them.

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles has previously reviewed Louis’ first offering on Livia entitled Out On His Own which you can locate via this link.

Following this maiden voyage, my enthusiasm for the projects at Livia Records involving Louis has not waned, especially after listening to their second outing together, this time in the company of the formidable pianist Noel Kelehan.

At the time this recording was made in 1977, Louis was only thirty-three years old, a relatively young age in the overall scheme of things given what has to be mastered to perform Jazz at a high level.

Some young Jazz players use a lot of notes in their solos and this is certainly the case with Louis’ playing on Some Other Blues. For the record, Noel who was all of 42 years of age, is no slouch, either, at the flag-wavers.

This tendency seems to be a part of the joys of first expression; the thrill of discovering that you can play an instrument and play it well.

Kind of like: “Look what I’ve found? Look what I can do? Isn’t this neat?”

Another reason why these young Jazz musicians play so many notes is because they can.

They are young, indiscriminately so, and they want to play everything that rushes through their minds, getting it from their head into their hands almost instantly.

Their Jazz experience is all new and so wonderful; why be discerning when you can have it all?

If such abilities to “get around the instrument” were found in a young classical musician romping his or her way through one of Paganini’s Caprices, they would be celebrated as a phenomena and hailed as a prodigy.

Playing Paganini’s Caprices, Etudes, et al. does take remarkable technical skill, but in fairness, let’s remember that Paganini already wrote these pieces and the classical musician is executing them from memory.

In the case of the Jazz musician, playing complicated and complex improvisations requires that these be made up on the spot with an unstated preference being that anything that has been played before in the solo cannot be repeated.

But oftentimes when a Jazz musician exhibits the facility to create multi-noted, rapidly-played improvised solos, this is voted down and labeled as showboating or derided as technical grandstanding at the expense of playing with sincerity of feeling.

Such feats of technical artistry are greeted with precepts such as “It’s not what you play, but what you leave out” as though the young, Jazz performer not only has to resolve the momentary miracle of Jazz invention, but has to do so while solving a Zen koan at the same time ["What is the sound of the un-played note" or some such nonsense].

All of this is by way of preparing you for the gusher of notes that issue forth from Louis and Noel played at extremely fast tempos on some of the tunes, the rapid interplay between guitar and piano in establishing vamps, riffs and rhythmic accents and the complex harmonic substitutions that challenge the listeners’ ear.

What Louis and Noel have created on Some Other Blues is exciting Jazz played with an enthusiasm and energy which permeates all the music on this wonderful recording.

For order information via Livia Records go here.

And here are the Crossroads Media and Livia Records Media Releases which will provide you with more insights and information about this outstanding recording.

About “SOME OTHER BLUES” - The previously unreleased SOME OTHER BLUES is regarded as a Holy Grail of Irish Jazz as it's the only known studio recording of Louis Stewart and Noel Kelehan. While Stewart was a local hero and internationally renowned guitarist, Kelehan was not well known as a jazz pianist outside of Ireland due to his TV-based composing, arranging and conducting, even though jazz was his first love. Here we find Louis and Noel, two giants of Irish jazz, in the kind of electrifying form that thrilled Irish jazz audiences in the 1960s, and 70s, in a programme of duets that scale the heights of swing, virtuosity, and interplay. Guitar and piano duet albums are uncommon in jazz, with Bill Evans and Jim Hall’s probably the best known. As Louis and Noel were huge admirers of both, they may well have been inspiration for SOME OTHER BLUES’. Both men were bone fide virtuosi, and there is a real sense of them reveling in their abilities, sparring with each other, and enjoying the excitement of the chase. While the omission of bass and drums open many possibilities, it jettison the safety net of the rhythm section. Of the nine times, three of them–‘YOU STEPPED OUT OF A DREAM’, ‘MINORITY’, and ‘I'LL REMEMBER APRIL’ are taken at blistering pace. And despite sometimes living on the edge of playable tempos, Louis and Noel don’t drop as much as a beat, even in the white heat of I’LL REMEMBER APRIL with its extraordinary tempo of 285 bpm. They each unleash lightning-fast solos, while playing through a set of chord substitutions that pile more chords on top of an already chord-rich piece. The Harmonic sophistication is a common feature of the album's medium and fast tempo tunes, and arrangements have Noel’s fingerprints all over them. His ability to jump backwards and forwards between keys, and the arrangement of Coltrane’s ‘SOME OTHER BLUES’, in which the first two choruses of both the guitar and piano solos feature two chords in every bar which constantly change key, is typical of Noel. Louis is a perfect partner to Noel's harmonic daredevilry, with his flawless technique, effortlessly flowing melodies, and deep swing. Each man is the perfect foil for the other, provoking and challenging in a playful way. This is very clear on ‘SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN’, where Noel plays the melody in minimalistic octaves, while Louis provides an almost Freddie Green-esque strummed accompaniment, making for the album's most mischievous take. The album's two ballads, Tadd Dameron’s classic ‘IF YOU COULD SEE ME NOW’, and Noel’s own beautiful ‘I ONLY HAVE TIME TO SAY I LOVE YOU’ reveal two masters capable of the kind of deep lyricism that the best ballad playing requires. The album was recorded in Bray, just south of Dublin, in the same studio where Louis Stewart recorded his solo OUT ON HIS OWN masterpiece just a few months earlier.

Louis Stewart was the giant iconic figure in Irish jazz in the same way as Enrico Rava was in Italy, Martial Solal in France and Tomasz Stańko in Poland. Alongside such giant figures there are always others who, though having a lower profile, are important contributors to the scene, who are equally deserving of recognition. In Ireland, Noel Kelehan was the epitome of this kind of figure – an important contributor to the scene, an influence on his colleagues, and a world-class musician, but someone who flew just under the international jazz radar.

Noel was a formidable pianist in the Bill Evans vein. His mid-1960s trio featured Louis Stewart and a later quintet had a weekly residency in Dublin's Killiney Court Hotel for years and recorded one of Ireland's best jazz albums "Ozone" in 1979.

He was also the pianist of choice for many jazz artists visiting Ireland. Noel was nine years older and more experienced than the guitarist when Louis first joined Noel’s trio at Dublin’s Intercontinental Hotel. Louis credited Noel with teaching him a lot about harmony. They remained friends and colleagues for the rest of their lives. They shared a mutual respect and a humorous, easy relationship. Their mutual admiration always sparked each other to great improvisatory heights when they played together. Despite their friendship and musical compatibility, after the late 1960s they didn’t play together very much due to the divergent paths their lives took. In 1969 Louis relocated to London to play with Tubby Hayes and take advantage of the wider scope that the London scene afforded his huge talent. Noel became a staff conductor, arranger, and producer for RTE; Ireland’s national broadcaster, in 1973, which made enormous demands on his time. It is in this role that Noel is best known to the wider music world, and he holds the record for being the most prolific conductor in the history of the Eurovision Song Contest,(twenty-four songs), and the conductor of the most winning entries, (five). He also did string arrangements for U2’s ‘Unforgettable Fire’ album, and this kind of arranging and conducting work limited the amount of jazz playing he could do. Noel died in 2012.

A word, by way of background, about Gerald Davis and Livia Records.

Gerald Davis, a Dublin painter and friend of Louis Stewart produced his first 1975 leader album ”LOUIS THE FIRST” and then founded Livia Records to release Louis’ great solo, “OUT ON HIS OWN” and other albums establishing Ireland’s first jazz record label with a name inspired by the works of James Joyce.

Livia ceased operations following Gerald's Death in 2005. With his family’s support, Dermot Rogers started a rediscovery and reactivation project in 2021 that led to this release and has unearthed a wealth of other live and studio recordings that are intended for future releases. “SOME OTHER BLUES” is the only recording of Louis Stewart with his friend and mentor Noel Kelehan.