James Hudson – ‘Moonray’

By londonjazz on 25 April 2024 • ( Leave a comment )

James Hudson Moonray
(Self-released(*). JH696970CD. Album review by Len Weinreich)

‘Moonray’ is vocalist James Hudson’s follow-up to his reportedly well-received debut album. His pleasant voice is pitched, unusually for a jazz singer, somewhere between low tenor and light baritone. His professed influences are Mel Tormé, Frank Sinatra, Nat ‘King’ Cole, and Sarah Vaughan, all stylistic giants and lucrative crossover artists.

Plenty of intriguing material here. Hudson enlists a selection of musical backgrounds and treatments to striking effect: the catchy bass clarinet riff from arranger Tom Smith at the start of Lane and Lerner’s On A Clear Day, Luke Tomlinson’s urgent brushwork interrupted by Smith’s airborne bebop alto on Cole Porter’s From This Moment On.

In 1939, at the peak of his celebrity, the incomparable clarinettist and bandleader Artie Shaw composed Moonray’s melody and a couple of lyricists, Paul Madison and Arthur Quenzer added words. A compelling vocal/horns unison figure segues into an interlude for Ralph Wyld’s vibraphone. Plaudits to Hudson for reviving Moonray. Bob Haymes and Alan Brandt’s That’s All opens with repeated piano chords stated against a string quintet, Hudson whispering confidentially into the microphone over a Latin beat, which bursts into fiesta starring Tom Walsh’s fiery trumpet before reverting to a simple rhythmic rimshot reintroducing the vocal and strings.

Four, purportedly a Miles Davis tune, has also been claimed by alto saxophonist Eddie ‘Cleanhead’ Vinson. Whatever, lyrics were added to the head and Davis’s recorded solo by Jon Hendricks, a.k.a. the poet laureate of jazz. After some tasty piano from Joe Hill, Hudson demonstrates jazz chops by slipping effortlessly into the tongue-twisting vocalese, strongly supported by Jack Tustin’s bass and stirring unison work. Tom Smith supplies a rocking tenor saxophone solo.

Eddy Howard, Dick Jurgens and Lew Quading (no, I’d never heard of them either) wrote Careless in 1939. The arrangement makes full use of the classy string quintet (Dan Oates, Rosie Judge, Jordan Sian, Susie Blankfield and Bryony Moody) and minimal piano, possibly in a concerted effort to disguise the undistinguished lyric.

Sunny, a fine and much-covered 60s song byBobby Hebb (not ‘Hepp’ as printed on the sleeve) swings solidly from Nick Fitch’s strummed guitar intro launching Hudson’s vocal over emphatic chords. Then Fitch is unleashed from rhythm duties for a pyrotechnic display that elevates Hudson to acrobatic vocal heights.

The Nearness Of You, an intimate ballad by Hoagy Carmichael and Ned Washington, almost demands a dead slow tempo. It’s approached as a duet, Hudson handling Washington’s lyric with lengthy sustained head tones over Wylde’s sonorous vibraphone, foot firmly planted on the sustain pedal, scoring a high rating on the sensuality meter.

However, Moonray is a second album (link to review of first album below) and a fact observed in the music industry is that second albums are frequently riddled with elephant traps. The cause is that many artists, attempting to replicate the success of the first album, sense an opportunity to broaden their musical style and appeal (after all, these days, who’s going to own a 150-metre Monaco-berthed yacht by singing jazz?). It’s an occurrence so common that insiders call it ‘The Sophomore Album Syndrome’. ‘Moonray’ is no exception. The Syndrome asserts itself in Hudson’s repertoire choices.

On this album, the principal artist is also the producer responsible for calling the tunes. Choosing an album song list is not dissimilar to inventing unusual food combinations to dazzle the judges’ taste buds on MasterChef. Sometimes contestants get it spot on. Sometimes not. Hudson opted to give his twist on a bunch of familiar ingredients (On A Clear Day, From This Moment On, That’s All, Sunny, The Nearness Of You); revive an overlooked classic (Moonray); introduce an intense spice to placate the palates of hardline jazz fans (Four); and, finally, forage a few neglected flavours so he could transmute unpromising material (Feed The Birds, Careless, Sing For Your Supper) into jazz. On all three, the snares lie in the lyrics, the most unpromising material of all being Feed The Birds, a saccharine dirge written by the Sherman Brothers for Disney’s Mary Poppins movie.

Accepting that Hudson nominated Sinatra as one of his prime influences, the Sinatra Test should have been applied. Nearly every song rated as a classic standard was, at some time or another, owed its rating to a Sinatra recording. Right up till the abysmal My Way (the exception that proves the rule), Sinatra showed faultless taste in music and lyrics (eventually admitting to loathing My Way). Furthermore, he was no slouch at making over elderly or forgotten material to the extent that Miles Davis and Ben Webster often followed Sinatra’s lead, performing ballads soon after he’d re-introduced them. Indeed, five of the tracks on this album, On A Clear Day, From This Moment On, That’s All, Sunny, The Nearness Of You, are all songs previously blessed with the Sinatra treatment. They’d all passed The Test.

But the Mary Poppins soundtrack was ignored by Sinatra (before the jazz police mount an attack, I’m well aware that Duke Ellington, under contract to Reprise, then Sinatra’s own label, recorded a Mary Poppins album as a movie tie-in. While Ellington worked some instrumental magic and the lyrics are omitted, the album is seldom discussed). But Hudson’s other mentors: Mel Tormé, Nat Cole and the divine Ms Vaughan also avoided Poppins. And for good reason: jazz and sentimentality seldom mix and, of the entire Poppins score, a monument to undiluted schmaltz, the Feed The Birds’ lyric has the singular ability to strip the enamel off your teeth. “Tuppence a bloody bag…” indeed.

Sing For Your Supper is a further case of clouded judgement. A witty Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart composition from 1938, Hart’s slightly risqué lyric (“Sing for your supper and you’ll get breakfast…”) lauds promiscuity, particularly when sung by an ingenue chanteuse. But, even in our enlightened times, is the attitude as effective via a chap’s vocal cords? Jury’s still out. And, apart from the fact that the lyric to Careless is better lost or forgotten, that wraps my rant.

But a trio of questionable choices and a few literals on the sleeve isn’t bad for a second album. The music was recorded at London’s Livingstone Studios by Marcus Locock, mixed at The Den Studios by Darren Williams and mastered at Abbey Road Studios by Geoff Pesche. No wonder that, cosseted with such a mass of expertise, the sound is packed with presence.