Ken Peplowski Live at Mezzrow

 © Copyright ® Steven Cerra. All rights reserved.

Aside from admiring him greatly, if truth be told, I’m not that familiar with either Ken Peplowski or his music, although I’ve been in his direct presence many times as he often hosted a weekend Jazz festival that was presented bi-annually close to my home near Newport Beach, CA.

As a person, I found him to be a very engaging with a well-developed sense of humor. He liked to laugh and I admired that in a host. Making Jazz can sometimes be too serious an affair and I prefer the approach espoused by bassist Bill Crow to wit: “Playing Jazz is fun.” It would seem that Ken embraced that creed as well.

The other thing that struck me about Ken was that while he honored the Jazz tradition and could be as mainstream as the next guy, he went about his business in a different way, a way that can best be summed up in the following quotation from his insert notes to his latest recording - Ken Peplowski Live at Mezzrow [Cellar Music CMSLF 007] which is part of the “Small’s Living Master Series:”

“This is my favorite way to record -I like to work on song material! for a year or two, find some interesting tunes that are not so often played, revive some tunes that I haven't played in years, and just go in with friends and record in a set up like a band on stage and play through the music, warts and all, and that's exactly what we did. What you'll hear on this record is the best of two one hour sets we played straight through, and l'm proud and honored to play with, and be inspired, by my friends Ted Rosenthal, Martin Wind and Willie Jones III.” 

I’ve emphasized in bold what I find pleasingly different about Ken’s “road less traveled” approach; it helps me discover new material performed in a Jazz vein.

I first noticed this tendency on Ken’s 2013 Maybe September CD for Tom Burns’ Capri Records [74125-2] which features Ken with the same personnel except Matt Wilson is on drums. Here again, Ken reaffirms his penchant for “something new, something old, something borrowed and something blue” in these comments from his insert notes:

"This record is kind of an unintentional reaction against our ever - perfect world. I've elected to record all of us close together in the studio, set up almost like a live gig, direct to two-track, with the assistance and great encouragement of Malcolm Addey engineer, and Tom Burns, producer. We did the whole thing in somewhere around three hours, not because we were going for some world record, but because it felt right when we'd finished. This is pretty much a "warts and all", raw-boned effort, but we stand by what we played on that particular day in 2012. You'll note a preponderance of "heartbreakers" in the material chosen: I've been drawn more and more to try and capture the pure emotion inherent in the songs I've chosen - I hope I've even partially succeeded, dear listener. One more thing - the song order follows a kind of arc of a relationship that could only be destined for ultimate failure - this is purely fictional. I assure you. There's not much more to say about the songs, except: "Always The Bridesmaid" is based on an old standard and the title was my whimsical attempt at answering a reporter's questioning my place in the jazz magazine polls: I couldn't have recorded "Maybe September" without first hearing Tony Bennett's sublime reading with Bill Evans: likewise "Romanza" without the amazing abilities of Ted Rosenthal as accompanist; and finally, everyone should go and check out the music and records of the late, great Harry Nilsson [“Without Her” is included on the CD]. That's it for now - all the best."

Ken  Peplowski 4/11/2013 [Emphasis Mine].

Unstated in the above excerpt but included on the album are Al Dubin and Harry Warren’s I’ll String Along With You, Irving Berlin’s All Alone By The Telephone and Bill Trader’s (Now and Then There’s) A Fool Such As I. Each is given an absolutely gorgeous treatment by Ken and company which conjures up the question as to why these beautiful melodies are not played more often?

In his notes to Ken’s The Ken Peplowski Quintet Mr. Gentle and Mr. Cool [Concord Jazz CCD-4419] music critic/columnist of the New York Daily News beautifully sums up Ken’s orientation this way:

“Tradition can serve two masters.

It can hamper, limit, restrict the artist into a fatigued complacency that bars the path to a new creative world. But it can also guide the artist to all that is good in the past while allowing him to soar into higher realms of art.”

Even in a big band context, Ken goes his own way as he explains in these excerpts from his notes to Sunrise - The Ken Peplowski Big Band [Arbors Records ARCD 19458] which are a reflection of the thoughtful planning he put into the project:

About the songs and arrangements: I've bookended the record with three songs [All I Need is the Girl, I Like the Sunrise, Come Back to Me] from the much-maligned and misunderstood Sinatra/Ellington album, as I've always loved these songs and their slightly uncharacteristic arrangements by Billy May. I've reworked them ever so slightly as instrumental, added a chorus here and there and I really think they still hold up and deserve wider recognition. The same could be said about Duke's "I Like The Sunrise" - a breathtakingly beautiful and somewhat neglected song from the canon. Allan Ganley was as great a drummer as he was an arranger, and he's  sorely missed by his fellow musicians in the UK and everyone else who ever played with him or met him. Here's two charts I asked him to write for me   -   Jobim's "Chega De Saudade" and the sublime "When You Wish Upon A Star" (from one of  my favorite movies, "Pinocchio"). The Alec Wilder composition [Clarinet in Springtime] and arrangement was written for Benny Goodman in the early 1940s and never played or recorded, and I'm eternally grateful to James Maher for passing the score on to me.”

There’s much more, but you get the idea.

Ken’s work is not an idle preoccupation; grab a bunch of tunes, find a producer to put up some schimolies with which to purchase some studio time, hire a few musicians and go in and cut an album.

He lovingly prepares for every aspect of the process of making music and recording it. Here’s a musician who is truly dedicated to his art and the results are music of the highest quality and integrity.

This is no less the case in his latest recording - Ken Peplowski Live at Mezzrow [Cellar Music CMSLF 007]  about which Ken offers this song selection commentary:

“About the songs: "Vignette" is a great song by Hank Jones, who I was thrilled to both record and tour with, although we never played this song together, which is based on the changes of an old tune called "Sweet Sue, Just You". "Prisoner Of Love" was actually inspired by James Brown's great rendition. "Beautiful Love" is a Victor Young marvel that's been floating around in my head for years, and I wanted to take "All The Things You Are" and kind of bring it back to its original intent, which was one of the most sublime ballads ever written (including the words, which are pure poetry). "Like Young" is a catchy song I came across while doing my streaming show, "The Shadow Of Your Smile" was written by a man I got to know a bit, Johnny Mandel, who confirmed for me that he wrote it with Jack Sheldon’s gorgeous trumpet sound in his head. “Cabin in the Sky” was written by the great composer Vernon Duke and sung marvelously by Ethel Waters in the movie of the same name, “Bright Mississippi” is Monk’s take on “Sweet Georgia Brown,” and “Here’s to Life,” written by my friend Artie Butler and Phyliss Molinary, means more to me now than ever before. The last three lines go like this: “Here’s to life, here’s to love, here’s to you.” And, finally, I always have to include either a Strayhorn or and Ellington piece, and we conclude with “Who Knows” by Duke, which shows that Duke could sometimes out-Monk himself if he chose to (and they were mutual admirers).”

As the late Richard Cook said of Ken’s work, it “is an expression of his own desire to preserve Jazz tradition even as he pushes it forward into a new generation.” Both aspects of this talent are on display on Ken Peplowski Live at Mezzrow, a marvelous recording that you’ll find difficult to take out of your CD player.