Stephensong opens – a collegiality in the considered congeniality, all souls calibre – with Everybody Says Don’t covered in recent years by John Barrowman and Maria Friedman and by Cheryl Bentyne. Its first recording by Harry Guardino was issued in 1964. Deeper Into the Woods song No One Is Alone is superbly dark – and moving. The ballad has been performed down the years by Bernadette Peters and Dame Cleo Laine who died recently. Barry Green accompanies beautifully in a pared back Fred Hersch-like vein.
Later another Into the Woods song Children Will Listen that Lee Salonga has covered in recent years in a far lusher treatment is included. “Teach me” song Take Me to the World written for the television musical Evening Primrose is so positive and life affirming. It is one of the most romantic songs of a very romantic album in the best possible sense. “I won’t be afraid with you” is just one of the incredible lyrics, the song has been covered by Judy Collins and by Barbra Streisand.
The 1970s song Marry Me A Little was originally written for Company but often didn’t make it into early productions and only came back into Company in the 1990s. Jazz singer Cyrille Aimée covered it on her Move On – A Sondheim Adventure album but really I turn to Barry Manilow’s version from the 1970s as a soppy preference.
Ian Shaw, whose last album with Tony Kofi, also featured Barry Green, delved knowingly and successfully into Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington’s incredible music and was recorded live in Soho. This latest, a studio album recorded over a few mid-October days last year at Echo Zoo Studios in Eastbourne, is just as strong as An Adventurous Dream and of course thematically very different.
Curmudgeons might claim that Stephensong isn’t a jazz album at all. But beyond such begrudgery and desire to place everything in a box it certainly brings all Shaw’s jazz resources to the table. Look back to his Fran Landesman themed A Ghost in Every Bar and you realise how the most peerless lyrics by the best lyricists inspire him to new heights and explore territory that he re-makes in his own image.
Also on the album is I Remember again from Evening Primrose when you can even pick out the creak of Green’s feet on the piano’s pedals. The sonics are crisp and the clarity of Shaw’s voice outstanding. He has incredible diction. Jazz guitarist John Pizzarelli has recorded a version of the song. But I turn most to Nancy Wilson’s inspired by listening to Stephensong.
So stripped back the setting of Stephensong means you get an almost rehearsal room flavour. So imagine Sondheim explaining the songs to a singer, sitting there in some archetypally but let’s be frank realistically dingy rehearsal room with a pianist going through the songs. Scary! But the only difference here is this is the finished article. Its organic quality is one aspect of its many strengths.
Motion is supplied by Company song Another Hundred People which has real exuberance in this version. It’s a world away from the glee club atmosphere of say the sweet but overly toothsome Swingle Singers version. Company material figures heavily on Stephensong and Being Alive is also here. Again Dame Cleo Laine did a lovely early version of the song on her Return to Carnegie album in the 1970s.
Green you can feel is tempted to take an extended solo here, and he solos a bit, but this album isn’t about big jazz solos either by singer or pianist — and that isn’t a criticism at all. There is such concision it’s striking how such relative restraint makes for even bigger impact throughout. Certainly this number provides many of the best moments of the well A&R’d album. Because Shaw is at his most personal here, you can feel the emotion, the wisdom of a mature man in his sixties singing these incredibly canonical songs of modern musical theatre – the vulnerability.
Merrily We Roll Along song Good Thing Going also here was recorded by Frank Sinatra of all people in the 1970s. (I liked Vanessa Williams’ later version even more.) Shaw’s jazz chops are the reason why he can sing such a grand song as this. He keeps the power under wraps but you feel the surge of possibilities waiting if needed and that power comes later on Somewhere.
Anyone Can Whistle goes back to the 1960s. Cleo Laine and James Galway did a version in the 1980s but I love most the instrumentalism of George Shearing’s rendering. Shaw can “slay a dragon” – not at all a paean to his Welshness. Lovely this. As is the boisterous almost sing it from the terraces version of West Side Story anthem Somewhere at the end.
So another massive career high then for Shaw. Green is a wonderful Ginger to his Fred relaying such invisible threads that become radiantly visible at every stop along the road.
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