Ed Palermo Big Band: One Child Left Behind

Rating: ★★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Bob Quaranta (p)
Ted Kooshian (syn, sampler)
Mike Boschen (tb)
Bruce McDaniel (g, v)
Ben Kono (reeds)
Mike James (v)
Charley Gordon (tb)
Napoleon Murphy Brock (v)
Katie Jacoby (vn, v)
Candy Zappa (v)
Ed Palermo (as, g)
Barbara Cifelli (reeds)
John Bailey (t)
Bill Straub (reeds)
Jenna McSwain (v)
Cliff Lyons (reeds)

Label:

Cuneiform Rune

October/2016

Catalogue Number:

420

RecordDate:

20-30 March and 28-30 July 2014

Don't yah just love our post-modern age? There's a version here of Neil Young's ‘Harvest Moon’ re-pitched with a Nelson Riddle-styled arrangement that is sublime, technically adroit, loyal to the song's spirit, and nary a pinch of irony. Palermo is simply a fan of great music: if it works, it goes in, and, boy, do his arrangements and band work big time. Palermo's best known for his Zappa re-arrangements for big band as visited on Eddy Loves Frank and the gargantuan Oh No! Not Jazz!!. One Child Left Behind keeps Zappa to the fore with energised, brass rich takes on ‘Fifty Fifty’, ‘Grand Wazoo’, ‘Cleetus Awreetus Awrightus’ and more. The presence of onetime Frank vocalist Napoleon Murphy Brock keeps the bloodline to Zappa live, as does Candy Zappa's delicious vox on ‘Evelyn, a Modified Dog’. Palermo's gift is to unpack the joy at the centre of Zappa's songs that the man himself was probably too tied up about to release. Palermo does the impossible: he makes Zappa swing. It's also fab how Palermo has broadened his horizons; as well as Young, Lieber and Stoller's ‘Is That All There Is?’ is hilariously semtexed and best of all Candy's back with with a sex-dripping take on Los Lobos’ dangerously hip sway ‘Kiko and the Lavender Moon’. Oh, yes, this is jazz, Zappa and more.

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