Corky Siegel’s Chamber Blues: Music that reveals its depth on first blush and bores deeper upon further immersion (Photo: Stephanie Bassos)
By David McGee
MORE DIFFERENT VOICES
Corky Siegel’s Chamber Blues
Dawnserly Records
As far back as 1966 veteran bluesman (harmonica and piano) Corky Siegel, who made his mark in that tumultuous decade as co-leader, with guitarist Jim Schwall, of the respected Siegel-Schwall Band, began fashioning a scintillating chamber music-blues hybrid. A scant two years later the band’s progressive approach was credible enough for it to be invited to accompany noted orchestras—the Chicago Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, Boston Pops—and to be featured on a 1973 Deutsche Grammaphon recording with Seiji Ozawa conducting the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra performing composer William Russo’s “Three Pieces for Blues Band and Orchestra.” All the while, from the late ’60s through the mid-’70s, Siegel-Schwall was recording steadily for Vanguard and RCA and touring all over. Siegel himself appeared on harmonica and piano on another Russo composition released as an album in 1979, again on DG, titled Russo: Street Music—Op. 65—A Blues Concerto. So by the time his Chamber Blues project began in 1994, it had been incubating in various forms for almost three decades. Arguably, his most fully realized recording in this vein came with 2017’s Other Voices, heralded in these pages and in many others as a full realization of Chamber Blues working on a higher plane of expressiveness and virtuosity. Now, five years later, comes a seventh blues-classical hybrid from Siegel and his Chamber Blues cohorts in the form of More Different Voices. A formidable followup to its predecessor it truly is, what with world music elements informing several of its arrangements, the blues sounding more raw than ever and the classical conversations veering into Impressionistic improvisational feels.
’Insurance,’ vocal by Toronzo Cannon, written by Toronzo Cannon, with Corky Siegel’s Chamber Blues on More Different Voices
For instance: amidst a jittery swirl of violins, cellos, tabla and sputtering blues harmonica, vocalist Marcella Detroit (doubling on harmonica in a lively exchange with Siegel) wails a swaggering mean man blues on “There Goes My Man.” For Ms. Detroit, otherwise a member of Shakespear’s Sister, it’s another star turn in this configuration, as her version of “Lay Down Sally” was one of the highlights of Different Voices. In “Little Blossoms Falling,” Frank Orrall, in a Leonard Cohen-esque deadpan, enumerates the many tiny blessings he finds among friends and nature, over an splintered backdrop in which table, violins and harmonica create a world in flux in what Siegel, in his liner notes, refers to as “a song for our times.”
‘Down So Low,’ Tracy Nelson with Corky Siegel’s Chamber Blues on More Different Voices
Tracy Nelson, in fine Mother Earth form, is on board too, burrowing passionately into her classic “Down So Low” with an empathetic string quartet gently embroidering her spare, bluesy piano and bruised, earthy vocal. Another no-nonsense blues woman, Lynn Jordan, kicks off the album with a severe reading of Siegel’s “No One’s Got Them Like I Do,” both speaking and singing her grave retorts to anyone who would think their own depths of despair are deeper than hers, over an artsy, almost free form, but sinister backdrop of darting strings and Siegel’s moaning harmonica. Blues stalwart Toronzo Cannon stops by to offer some friendly advice on self-preservation in his lowdown “Insurance,” but instead of a blues combo he’s declaiming over Siegel’s harmonica, an atmospheric tabla and anxiety-ridden strings.
‘Hine Ma Tov Blues’ featuring Cantor Pavel Roytman, with Corky Siegel’s Chamber Blues on More Different Voices
The showcase items here are two in number. Check out the 10:22 opus “Oasis, ” written by legendary sax man Ernie Watts. This masterwork leisurely unfolds in layers as Watts’s melodious, warm sax explores the melody line and engages in deep dialogue with Kalyan Pathak’s tabla ornamentations over subtle string and harmonica support—beautiful and evocative all at once. The current climate elevates Ukrainian Cantor Pavel Roytman’s stirring Jewish chant “Hine Ma Tov Blues,” a theme-and-variation work of interwoven blues and Mozartian textures, all of which serve to elevate this moment to higher plane of meaning altogether. Recorded before Russian invaded Ukraine, this version, in its spare, foreboding arrangement keyed by Siegel’s intense harmonica formulations, suggests the dark days ahead; this, in contrast to, say, the Weavers’ more sprightly but reverent traditional folk version, with Pete Seeger on banjo, Fred Hellerman on guitar, and vocalist Ronnie Gilbert plaintively emoting the lyrics of the Jewish hymn giving thanks for the love of friends and family.
‘Penguins in the Opera House,’ poem by Corky Siegal, performed by Corky Siegel’s Chamber Blues on More Different Voices
The CD contains a wonderful bonus track in “Penguins in the Opera House,” a tune familiar to Siegel fans (he wrote the poem in 1973 and first recorded it in 1994) but here getting a little different presentation from the Chamber Blues players on violins, violas and cello (there’s a splash of piano there too) as Siegel playfully recites the inspiration he had when gazing at “a symphony orchestra looking like penguins in their tuxedos and the people wearing minks and sables in the audience.” The poem has a Shel Silverstein quality in its dry humor describing the anti-authoritarian penguins in the orchestra ignoring the beleaguered Maestro’s angry baton as they eagerly continue “sawing on the violins/they only stopped to turn the page,” all leading up to a final stanza with an O. Henry twist. Plenty of surprises here, as always when Corky Siegel shows up with his gifted friends and makes music that reveals its depth on first blush and bores deeper upon further immersion.
