In some ways the perennially unassuming Mose Allison makes things hard for his audiences. There’s his habit, for instance, of rattling through tunes with little in the way of introduction and not much thought for dramatic contrast. A trio will always have less room for manoeuvre, yet Allison — an improbably spry-looking 78 — seldom bothers to shake up the arrangements.
His vocal range is on the narrow side too. If you are sitting at the back of the room, listening to him can be like eavesdropping on a rusty tenor saxophone blowing a rough blues scale on the other side of a partition wall.
Sometimes, in fact, you could be forgiven for thinking that he regards his lyrics as something to be tolerated in order to have an excuse to indulge in his unique, shuffling brand of “chromatic boogie”.
For all that, his latest visit to London is essential listening for the simple reason that the Mississippi-born bard of Long Island has given us some of the quirkiest songs of the past 40 years. No one has blended jazz and blues with such authority. And his refusal to play the showbiz game is endearing in its own strange way. There is nothing synthetic or self-consciously retro about his act. Younger singers make reverent noises about “the tradition ”. You take him on his own terms, or not at all. It is as simple as that.
By now, for example, you would have thought that even he would be getting tired of hearing his lugubrious, minor key treatment of that ancient chestnut You Are My Sunshine. I have certainly lost count of the number of times I have heard it over the years. Yet, there it still is, as dark and gloomy as ever. John D. Loudermilk’s mildly risqué satire You Call It Joggin’ (But I Call It Runnin’ Around) has aged a lot better: along with the wry, post-apocalyptic anthem, Ever Since the World Ended, it drew some of the loudest laughter of the opening set. The Grey Power sentiments of Certified Senior Citizen hit the mark again too.
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Keeping conversation to a minimum, Allison hurtled through the old favourites, including a newly topical Everybody Cryin’ Mercy (“Everybody cryin’ peace on earth/ Just as soon as we win this war.”)
The unfairly maligned Curtis Stigers — the best jazz singer around at the moment — delivered a scorching version at this same venue just a couple of months ago. Allison maybe couldn’t match him for heart-on-sleeve intensity, yet his dry, understated delivery had a force all of its own.