Search - Davis And Dow :: Loverly

Here s how I would define the word playful : sing Wouldn t It Be Loverly, and, when you get to the end of the second line, with one enormous..., then wait as long as humanly possible before you get to the word chair. In all the millions of times I've heard that classic show tune, it never occurred to me that Loverly might contain a sexual double-entendre. Mind you that Julie Davis knows well that she doesn't have to actually do anything to lead us to this conclusion, other than simply inserting a pause, to start our minds racing. In fact, it s the not doing anything that does the trick. Like the best singers, she knows what to do and what not to do, and in this case, simply by delaying a word, she knows that our heads will do all the work for her.I had never heard Davis & Dow before receiving this CD in the mail, but the immediate thing that I liked about them was their sense of humor: so much of contemporary jazz, both singers and instrumentalists (cabaret as well as jazz, as a matter of fact), tend to be as serious as your life: but Davis & Dow knew what Nat King Cole, Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong and so many others of the great generations knew, that a sense of humor is closely related to a sense of rhythm, and in these great icons of the mid-20th century, they are but two sides to the same kind. Both Davis and Dow perform You re My Thrill seductively enough, accenting its undertow of undulatingly erotic qualities this is as good a place as any to point out Kelly Dow s gypsy-style guitar work, and how he executes a manouche version of a tango. (Likewise, on Caravan, Mr. Dow has got us convinced that, the lyric to the contrary, this is hardly a desert caravan but one of the Romany variety.) On You re My Thrill, I can t help but smile when I hear Ms. Davis play not only with the lyrics and the melody but the very sound of her voice, which she makes sound like Billie Holiday one second and Shirley Bassey the next, as if she were hopping between a Southern accent and a British accent. Honey Pie is a perfect piece of more contemporary material for the team, being a Beatles song written and sung by Paul McCartney with his tongue deeply in his cheek and a smile on his face. On The White Album, McCartney and producer George Martin went to the trouble of doctoring the track to make it sound like an unrestored relic from the 20s: how many rock-era songs actually have a verse that sets up the chorus. Davis & Dow, contrastingly, also treat it like an authentic 20s song, by reinterpreting it, even jamming on it, as if it were Little White Lies or My Blue Heaven. Dancing is a catchy, Brazilian-inspired original, and Mr. Sandman is just as creative, reinventing the late 50s hit with Hot Club of France-style interplay (and a clever intro, referencing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star before two guitars render the opening lines in counterpoint). Davis doesn t need to mess with the melody to personalize it. Apple Tree fits perfectly into their trajectory of serious musicianship and playful subject matter. Irving Berlin's Reaching For The Moon shows why he was one of the great American masters of the waltz, and the piece effectively showcases violinist Federico Britos; Azure is an underdone Ellington tune that D & D set to an exotic rhythm pattern so as to convey the proper sense of drifting, dreaming in an azure mood. Dedicated to You is early Sammy Cahn & Saul Chaplin. Cleverly, this is one of two tunes (the other is Stairway to The Stars ) that D &D chose to do in the most intimate manner imaginable. Here I was particularly struck by not only how playful the music of Davis & Dow is, but how extremely musical. Then again, I could say that about the whole album. Liner notes by Will Friedwald