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Step back with me, if you will, to the late 1990’s. Remember the swing revival- Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau in the classic guys-movie, Swingers, Gap’s “Swing Khaki” advertising campaign, bands like Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, the Brian Setzer Orchestra, Cherry Poppin’ Daddys, and the Squirrel Nut Zippers? Omnipresent in American popular culture at the time, these swing-era trends were quickly forgotten by the millennial generation. Despite the change in musical climate, however, one of the best products of the time, southern California band, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy has persisted, touring and recording regularly for the last decade. Their latest project, How Big Can You Get?: The Music of Cab Calloway, pays tribute to one of the 1940s most notable big-band leaders, Cab Calloway.

On stage at the Lied Center in Lawrence Saturday night, frontman, Scotty Morris, looked the part of a 1940s bandleader with his charcoal pinstripe suit and matching fedora. Ten years after recording the Big Bad Voodoo Daddy Live album I had worn out, Scotty’s voice was no longer smooth as honey. Even so, he was still a first-class frontman. Morris’ fluid facial expressions made for great storytelling, while his body language was the definition of cool, calm, and collected. With his wingtip shoes often planted firmly on the floor; it was Morris’ head tilts, facial expressions, and hand gestures which cued all manner of percussive bops and wails from the horn section. With all this movement and expression, Scotty Morris’ stage energy was contagious, enlivening the eight other musicians onstage. Sadly, I found myself disappointed that the band’s energy did not transmit to the audience. While the Lied Center crowd duly responded to calls from the stage for rhythmic hand claps, no one spontaneously took to the aisles dancing, as I had read sometimes happens at Big Bad Voodoo Daddy concerts.

An entertaining mix of stage antics accompanied the music onstage adding to the Big Bad Voodoo Daddy live experience. I counted four double bass spins by bassist Dirk Shumaker, which, I’m told by my bass-playing neighbor are skills as important to jazz and punk bass-playing as scales and arpeggios. It was also enjoyable to watch the horn section who comically point fingers at each other when acknowledged by Morris to the audience’s emphatic applause. Even trumpeter Glen “The Kid” Marhevka had a turn at instrumental antics, flipping into the air and then catching his cup mute at one point.

In general, amplified sound at a music concert falls into two categories: an absolute disaster, where it seems the club’s kitchen staff has been charged with twisting knobs on the 60-channel mixing board, or, pitch-perfect, where competent professionals are constantly tweaking the balance of instruments and vocals throughout the show to get the sound just right. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy’s performance Saturday thankfully fell into the latter category.  With the exception of Scotty’s vocals on the first tune, which were buried under the power of the five-person horn section, the band sounded great. The horn section was powerful and the lush jazz harmonies nicely balanced particular in signature tune, “Mr. Pinstripe Suit.” The drums, bass, and piano created an equally adept rhythm section.

Solos by the ensemble were highly entertaining visually and encompassed a wide stylistic spectrum. Pianist Josh Levy, shone during a solo in the tune “5, 10, 15 Times,” the usually tininess of amplified piano nowhere to be found thanks to a nuanced touch and perhaps also due to the small mixer, just for the piano, next to him. Tenor saxophonist Karl Hunter played a number of varied, impressive solos, even briefly working in a quotation of the Mario Brothers Theme during “Jumping Jive.” Trumpeters Glen “The Kid” Marhevka and Tony Bonsera both frequently soared into the stratosphere of the trumpets range for their solos, never missing a note.

The best tune the band played from their new album was “Ghost of Smokey Joe,” a mixture of three of Calloway’s most famous numbers, “Minnie the Moocher,” “Kicking the Gong Around,” and “Smokey Joe.” This was not a medley in the standard sense, but a re-composition by Scotty Morris combining stretches of all three songs, which the bandleader explained shared one large narrative.

The band chose to end the evening with high-energy performances of several of their signature tunes, “You and Me and the Bottle Makes Three (Tonight),” “Go Daddy-O,” and lastly “So Long-Farewell-Goodbye,” somehow working a short ensemble quote of “Sweet Home, Alabama” into the latter. The Lied Center’s near-capacity crowd gave long energetic standing ovation to the band, enjoying their tour of the artistry of Cab Calloway via Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.

REVIEW:
The Lied Center of Kansas Presents
“How Big Can You Get” 100 Years of Cab Calloway Featuring Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
Saturday, October 22 at 7:30 p.m.
Lied Center of Kansas
1600 Stewart Dr, Lawrence, KS
For more information, visit http://lied.ku.edu and http://www.bbvd.com

By Topher Levin

Classical Editor and Contributor

Christopher (Topher) Levin is a composer, pianist, music theorist, and music blogger based in Kansas City, MO. His compositions have been performed at music festivals across the US and in Europe. He has spent two summers in Paris, France studying music at the Ecole Normale de Musique through the EAMA program. His trio for clarinet, piano, and percussion is published in the SCI Journal of Scores.

Topher holds degrees from the University of Missouri-Kansas City (M.M.) in music theory and (M.M.) in composition and from James Madison University in Virginia (B.M.) in composition. Primary composition teachers have included John S. Hilliard, Paul Rudy, Zhou Long, James Mobberley, Chen Yi, Claude Baker, Narcis Bonet, Michel Merlet, and João Pedro Oliveira. His piano teachers have included Patricia Brady and Karen Kushner. Topher maintains a piano studio of 22 students.

Having recently completed a Master's thesis on the beautiful complexities of Chinary Ung's trio, Spiral I, Topher turned his writing attention to the more informal blogging medium. He has taken to it quite well, sharing posts on strange and wonderful music and art found across the web with a modest but growing number of blog followers. He looks forward to writing for KCM and sharing with its readers the stories of all the amazing musicians performing in Kansas City.