Kirk Lightsey Trio with Alex Hitchcock roll with it at Ronnie’s

Eighty-five years old and still swinging, pianist Kirk Lightsey is the last in the line of great Detroit pianists that includes Barry Harris, Tommy Flanagan and Hank Jones – the guys who used to go and listen to Art Tatum in Toledo in the 1930s. Lightsey came a little later, but he went to school with Paul Chambers and Ron Carter, recorded frequently with Chet Baker in the Sixties, and played with Sonny Stitt and Bobby Hutcherson. And now here he was at Ronnie Scott’s, courtesy of London’s own Alex Hitchcock, who secured the gig for him and his drummer, Sangoma Everett. They were wonderfully underpinned by UK bassist Steve Watts, whose playing has a beautiful melodic feel, and whose time and intonation are pinpoint accurate.

It was a warm, old school mainstream jazz kind of evening, enlivened by the constant interplay between Lightsey and Everett. “Ahaaa! Aaaargh!” Everett would shout. “Yaaaah! Hahahaa!” Lightsey would reply. They sounded like a pair of old tomcats having their tummies tickled. The modernist Hitchcock had to adjust his usual style a little, but otherwise kept up admirably with these two veterans on standards like ‘In Your Own Sweet Way’ and ‘Spring is Here’, which Lightsey introduced with a lovely solo piano passage.

On the Lightsey original ‘Heaven Dance’, Hitchcock sounded a little like Wayne Shorter, albeit with added vibrato. In fact, one of stand-out tunes was Shorter’s ‘Infant Eyes’, played in the even-eighths style of ‘Maiden Voyage’, while ‘Pee Wee’, a song Tony Williams apparently wrote for his dog, was a gentle waltz. There was an expansive feel to the set, most tunes clocking in at around 15 minutes. They ended with a rollicking version of McCoy Tyner’s ‘Blues on the Corner’, during which Everett attacked his kit like a fencer, all elbows, knees and shoulders, as Kirk Lightsey showed his appreciation with further volleys of “Hyaaa ha ha haaa…”