Fans of the late Dan Hicks‘ unique take on swing music will surely approve of this latest offering from Floating World Records. Although billed as a live show from 1973, the disc actually comprises of eight songs recorded for a radio broadcast in 1973 along with a further nine recorded in 2009, again for a radio broadcast. While the early songs are all a hoot it’s the latter set which is the icing on the cake here, portraying Hicks a little longer in the tooth perhaps, his voice older but still swell and with his sense of humour fully intact. In fact, much of the joy to be had here is in Hicks’ between song banter which is cool, hip and quite hilarious.
It’s the original Hot licks (and Lickettes) on the earlier recordings – Hicks on guitar and vocals, “Symphony” Sid Page on violin, John Girton guitar and Jaime Leopold on bass along with the excellent Naomi Ruth Eisenberg and Maryann Price on vocals- essentially the band who recorded the classic albums Where’s The Money and Striking It Rich. They’re on top form here and none of the songs featured on this disc appeared on the live Where’s The Money album so there’s no repetition here. They kick off with Evenin’ Breeze with Hicks and The Licks getting into Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli territory musically while vocally he and The Lickettes come across like jazz singing cowboys (and cowgals). The vocal interplay on the groovy Walkin’ One And Only is a joy to listen to and the ever perennial How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away is, as always, quite magnificent. Above all, one is impressed by Hicks casting off of any psychedelic dues as he and the band swing through a set of songs which wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a 1940’s radio show although they are all filtered through his very hip sensibility.
The 2009 set is, if anything, even better. Hicks had revived the Hot Licks band name and was touring to promote his latest album Tangled Tales with several songs from that album featured here. Still ploughing his old time swing folk with a flourish, Hicks sounds older but his wisecracks and introductions are as sharp as ever (when an audience member shouts out “We love you,” Hicks is straight back with “Thanks Mom.”) and the band (Richard Chon violin, Dave Bell guitar, Paul Smith bass with Roberta Donnay and Daria on vocals) are more than a match for the original combo. The Blues My Naughty Baby Gave To Me opens the set with Hicks scatting away before launching into a fairly audacious take on Horace Silver’s jazz classic Song For My Father, given here a slight Caribbean slant which would surely have Ry Cooder gnashing his teeth that he hadn’t thought of doing this first. A scintillating delivery of ‘Long Come A Viper is introduced deadpan with Hicks saying “Here’s a tune called ‘Long Come A Viper, it’s a good little story tune about a viper which comes along so I called it ‘Long Come A Viper, it was somewhat of a natural conclusion.” There’s a whole lot of scatting on Tangled Tales while The Diplomat shows that Hicks could be topical while mining old time musical tropes. The set closes with Hicks saying that his last song Who Are You is “Folk swing at it’s best” and, by golly, he’s right.
We haven’t got a clip from the album to play so here’s some vintage video which conveys some of The Hot Licks’ fun and adventure…
Blabber 'n' Smoke 