Jan. 30--On any given Tuesday, the Fat Babies play early-period jazz at the Green Mill with fire and finesse.
The tables and chairs at the front of the room are cleared away, and couples expert in the Charleston, Lindy Hop and other vintage steps rush into the space, dancing late into the night.
But on Friday evening the Fat Babies had the luxury of putting on a very different kind of performance at the Mill: a concert date designed for listening rather than shimmying. Though the audience proved too talkative, there was no discounting the privilege of hearing the Fat Babies reawaken age-old jazz traditions with a degree of freshness and respect they rarely receive.
To the Fat Babies, music of Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller, Fletcher Henderson and less-celebrated early masters are not relics to be approached with emotional distance and restraint. Quite the contrary, the band revels in vigorous interpretations of this music, even slow-tempo works dispatched with vibrant tone and urgent expression. Pre-bebop jazz needn't be regarded as a museum piece, these musicians seem to be saying, and they make their case compellingly.
Nothing in the Fat Babies repertoire is more valued than the ensemble's work with the music of Morton, the first great jazz composer. Though overshadowed in the popular imagination by Louis Armstrong, whose brilliant improvisations and ebullient personality long ago made him the face of this music, Morton codified the art of jazz composition (and explained its meaning in his Library of Congress oral history recordings).
No work more famously articulates Morton's compositional techniques of the Roaring '20s, when the New Orleans piano genius was based in Chicago, than "Black Bottom Stomp." But no matter how times you've heard Morton's recording with his Red Hot Peppers, a first-rate live performance more fully reveals why listeners made this piece an anthem of the era.
The Fat Babies took "Black Bottom Stomp" at a brisk but not frenetic tempo, in effect acknowledging its roots in popular dance. To hear clarinetist John Otto, cornetist Andy Schumm and trombonist Dave Bock nimbly dispatch the fast-moving, front-line counterpoint of this music was to savor anew the ingenuity of Morton's writing. Paul Asaro's pianism conveyed the signature bounce we associate with Morton's up-tempo playing, and drummer Alex Hall's meticulously placed accents and tautly dispatched breaks gave this music precisely the rhythmic snap it requires.
Add to this Fat Babies founder Beau Sample's bass-notes anchor and banjoist Jake Sanders' chordal support, and you had about as vivid and authentic an account of "Black Bottom Stomp" as you're likely to encounter at this late date.
In Morton's "Frog-I-More Rag," the Fat Babies evoked King Oliver's orchestra of the 1920s, Schumm's high-flying cornet solo matched in spirit by the ensemble's buoyant approach to rhythm. Once again, details of voicing, color and texture that are lost in vintage recordings were made lucid in performance.
Of course, the Fat Babies delved into other repertoire, as well, creating a fitting portrait of music the world calls "traditional jazz" that, in fact, was quite radical for its time. In the 1920s standard "Liza," one marveled at the structural clarity of the Fat Babies' performance, as well as the horns' unanimity of phrase and drummer Hall's expertly timed staccato cymbal strikes.
Even the anachronistic, kitschy musical references to Asian culture in "Sing Song Girl" shed light, revealing how 1930s America imagined life on the other side of the world. And in Duke Ellington's "The Mooch," Schumm's growling, plunger-muted cornet solo -- played over Sample's relentless bass -- recaptured an era without distorting it.
Fat Babies fans will be glad to know that two new albums are planned for release later this year, one devoted to music of Morton (and including rarities).
Something to look forward to.
Howard Reich is a Tribune critic.
The Fat Babies play at 9 p.m. Tuesdays at the Green Mill Jazz Club, 4802 N. Broadway; $6; 773-878-5552 or greenmilljazz.com.
hreich@tribpub.com
