Jay Leonhart: The Bass Lesson

INFORMATION
All About Jazz
artist biography
Galaxies and Planets[CD]

New York @ Night: May 2002
Worldly Vocalists

The Bass Lesson — that’s what bassist/vocalist Jay Leonhart calls his one-man show, which he performed upstairs at Studio 54 to a full house and a squadron of meticulously placed video cameras (a DVD release is in the works). Leonhart delivers his lyrics in a rambling, free-association style, but there’s always a clear narrative, usually a witty, self-effacing look at the musician’s (bassist’s) life. In one story, he’s running perilously late to a gig with Mel Torme; in another, he’s being snubbed by Dizzy Gillespie at a social occasion. One song directly addresses the sheer difficulty of singing while playing the bass, but Leonhart does it quite well, in fact, sometimes inserting little harmonized bass/voice breaks that perfectly outline a series of changes. His best lyric is about life in the Middle Ages, when musicians were dealing with a very different set of problems: "The Middle Ages/plague’s so contagious/Where did I get this lasting cough?/Why is my right foot falling off?"

— David Adler

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