This delightful album of post-Beatle Paul McCartney songs was instigated directly by the songwriter. The great man somewhat shyly wrote to the singer-guitarist John Pizzarelli, with whom he had collaborated on a recent standards album, suggesting the title and a few songs.
It’s an interesting story, because it shows McCartney to be concerned about his legacy as a composer rather than a Beatle or solo performer. When he started out, songwriters had a chance of seeing their work become standards, performed repeatedly in cover versions by artists from a broad sweep of genres, including jazz. That system is long gone, partly thanks to the singer-songwriter era McCartney helped to create.
So this is a belated attempt to revive that tradition — and Pizzarelli reconfigures these songs brilliantly. Inconsequential pieces such as Coming Up and Let ’Em In become, respectively, a barrelling blues and a swing novelty. Rather too piddling for rock’n’roll, they find their feet here.
Unsurprisingly, McCartney’s ballads need little alteration, and it’s lucky that he tends to work harder on the lyrics of his slower numbers. The saxophonist Harry Allen guests on Junk (a kind of Eleanor Rigby for rubbish dumps), while Warm and Beautiful is here lyrical enough to be a Tin Pan Alley nugget.
It helps that Pizzarelli’s easy voice often sounds strikingly similar to McCartney’s, especially on Heart of the Country. Yet it’s the clever arrangements that make this album so sympathetic; true to the originals yet recognisably jazz. More like this and McCartney could be the Gershwin of our times. (Concord)