Album of the Day-April 27
Mose Alison — I Don’t Worry About A Thing
Mose Alison — I Don’t Worry About A Thing
27.April.2020
Mose Allison
I don’t worry about a thing.
1962
Attempting to pigeonhole Mose Allison is a waste of time.
Jazz musician, piano player, social critic, singer, songwriter, and satirist are usually the most common labels.
And he was indeed all of those.
But Mose Allison was also a pipeline to musicians like Pete Townsend, Bonnie Raitt, and John Mayall. The Clash covered Allison’s “Look Here’ on Sandinista! and the Pixies even wrote a tribute to him called “Allison.”
Mose Allison was one of a kind.
Allison recorded for Atlantic Records from 1962 until 1976, during the peak of his, and the labels, powers. After thumping around a couple of other labels he landed at Atlantic and came out of the gate with I don’t worry about a thing. — his first album for the storied label.
Recorded as just a trio:
Mose Allison — piano and vocals
Addison Farmer — bass
Osie Johnson — drums
The album deceptively simple sound was produced by Atlantic Nesuhi Ertegun and proved to be his breakthrough album. Given that this was the era of JFK’s Camelot and it was the seemingly halcyon days of 1962, the conceit of the album is that the jaunty music is in contrast to the expanding Cold War with Russia, the bubbling social undercurrent of the civil rights movement and the growing expansion of the war in Vietnam.
All topics that would be covered in greater depth as the decade progressed. This dissimilitude between music and lyrics was a standard of Mose Allison’s work and it’s here that his torpid vocal style and lyrics do a fine job of masking Allison’s underlying hypocrisy in, and frustration with, society as a whole.
Mose Allison was a social critic before Bob Dylan:
I Don’t Worry Abou A Thing
I don’t worry about a thing
Cuz I know nothing’s gonna be alright
It Didn’t Turn Out That Way
When I was a schoolboy
The teacher said to me
Boy work hard you can be what you want to be
Well, it didn’t turn out that way
The Song is Ended
The song is ended
But the melody lingers on
You and the song are gone
But the melody lingers on
And a musical satirist before Randy Newman:
Your Mind Is On Vacation
You sittin’ here and yakkin right in my face
You comin’ on exactly like you own the place
You know if silence was golden
You couldn’t raise a dime
Because your mind is on vacation and your mouth is workin’ overtime
On the surface, these songs can sound bouncy and happy but they belie the artist's own frustration.
A trait that continues to resonate with not only with jazz and blues artist but also with many rock and roll artists.
While I don’t worry about a thing. sounds every bit a jazz record, the lyrics move the needle over to blues making it a crossover record — and in 1962, that was a bit of an anomaly in any genre…and accounts for why it was Allison’s breakthrough album.