Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks. Live in LA 1973. Floating World Records

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Fans of the late Dan Hicks‘ unique take on swing music will surely approve of this latest offering from Floating World Records. Although billed as a live show from 1973, the disc actually comprises of eight songs recorded for a radio broadcast in 1973 along with a further nine recorded in 2009, again for a radio broadcast. While the early songs are all a hoot it’s the latter set which is the icing on the cake here, portraying Hicks a little longer in the tooth perhaps, his voice older but still swell and with his sense of humour fully intact. In fact, much of the joy to be had here is in Hicks’ between song banter which is cool, hip and quite hilarious.

It’s the original Hot licks (and Lickettes) on the earlier recordings – Hicks on guitar and vocals, “Symphony” Sid Page on violin, John Girton guitar and Jaime Leopold on bass along with the excellent Naomi Ruth Eisenberg and Maryann Price on vocals- essentially the band who recorded the classic albums Where’s The Money and Striking It Rich. They’re on top form here and none of the songs featured on this disc appeared on the live Where’s The Money album so there’s no repetition here. They kick off with Evenin’ Breeze with Hicks and The Licks getting into Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli territory musically while vocally he and The Lickettes come across like jazz singing cowboys (and cowgals). The vocal interplay on the groovy Walkin’ One And Only is a joy to listen to and the ever perennial How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away is, as always, quite magnificent. Above all, one is impressed by Hicks casting off of any psychedelic dues as he and the band swing through a set of songs which wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a 1940’s radio show although they are all filtered through his very hip sensibility.

The 2009 set is, if anything, even better. Hicks had revived the Hot Licks band name and was touring to promote his latest album Tangled Tales with several songs from that album featured here. Still ploughing his old time swing folk with a flourish, Hicks sounds older but his wisecracks and introductions are as sharp as ever (when an audience member shouts out “We love you,” Hicks is straight back with “Thanks Mom.”) and the band (Richard Chon violin, Dave Bell guitar, Paul Smith bass with Roberta Donnay and Daria on vocals) are more than a match for the original combo. The Blues My Naughty Baby Gave To Me opens the set with Hicks scatting away before launching into a fairly audacious take on Horace Silver’s jazz classic Song For My Father, given here a slight Caribbean slant which would surely have Ry Cooder gnashing his teeth that he hadn’t thought of doing this first. A scintillating delivery of ‘Long Come A Viper is introduced deadpan with Hicks saying “Here’s a tune called ‘Long Come A Viper, it’s a good little story tune about a viper which comes along so I called it ‘Long Come A Viper, it was somewhat of a natural conclusion.”  There’s a whole lot of scatting on Tangled Tales while The Diplomat shows that Hicks could be topical while mining old time musical tropes. The set closes with Hicks saying that his last song Who Are You is “Folk swing at it’s best” and, by golly, he’s right.

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We haven’t got a clip from the album to play so here’s some vintage video which conveys some of The Hot Licks’ fun and adventure…

Floyd Domino and Maryann Price. Upfront. New Tex Records

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Floyd Domino and Maryann Price are both veterans of the Western Swing revival of the seventies, Domino most memorably as a member of Asleep At the Wheel while Price was the voice on several of Dan Hicks and The Hot Licks’ finest recordings. Both have extensive CVs beyond these achievements with Price being an integral part of the Kinks’ 1974 line up and also spending time with (those guys again) Asleep at The Wheel, Domino playing and recording with Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, George Strait and Waylon Jennings. So far so pedigree.

Upfront finds them in the company of Gary Bristol on bass and Michael Holleman, drums along with Kenny Kosek (ex Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band) on fiddle as they delve into the jazzier roots of their respective careers on a selection of covers and self penned originals that run the gamut from Annie Ross vocalese to Gypsy swing and some sumptuous late night jazz sophistication. Price’s voice has moved on from her Hot Licks days, a little lower, more experienced but with a fine sense of mischievousness lurking within while Domino’s piano shines like Oscar Peterson’s or even the Duke himself at times. Allied to some very fine fiddle from Kosek and the solid rhythm section the set is as tight as the proverbial duck’s A while retaining the essential element of swing with all of the numbers at the very least toe tapping or (on the slower numbers) causing the listener to cast about for a dance partner.

Aside from the performances the song selection is something of a triumph. No dog eared covers here that have been trampled to death in the past. Dan Hicks has two numbers featured, Cowboy’s Dream #19 and O’Reilly At The Bar both of which recall the Hot Licks’ hip reinterpretation of swing music with the latter’s bar fight shenanigans wonderfully portrayed. Henry Hipken’s Who Knows What Tomorrow Might Bring swings mightily with Chico Marx piano (only better played) and vibrant gypsy fiddle opening a world of romance and danger. Another Hipkens cover, I Must Be Doing Something Right has Price playfully adopting a naive innocence delivered with a Mae West tongue in cheek as the band lay down a fantastic backdrop, cheeky and elegant. On The Last Day Of Pompeii (by Michael Peter Smith) is another number that recalls the vapid elegance of the pre war jet set, fiddling while Rome burns ( to mix a metaphor) as Price relates all the things she could have done had she known the top was about to blow. Is All Of this For Me is a velvet curtain of a song, dinky, late night, almost orchestrated as the fiddle hovers over an excellent piano solo and a Noel Coward like stiff upper lip romance.

Price maintains the quality with Everybody’s Talking About The Same Thing a witty and coquettish inquiry into love while The Apology (co-written with Domino) allows her voice to slip and slide within an update of Julie London’s Cry Me A River. They close the album with the excellent The Damndest Finest Ruins, written by Domino that pulls in Steely Dan and Charlie Mingus with the vocals adorning the jazz chops of the band with Holleman sparkling on cymbals while Domino plays his best.

It maybe odd to find what amounts to a jazz album coming from Texas but these guys have the chops and the end result encapsulates music from New York to San Francisco with a detour south in between. Some time spent looking at the New Tex website shows that they have several other tasty offerings with Domino featuring on piano on The Great Recession Orchestra’s album, Double Shot, a tribute to the Mississippi Sheiks and 1940’s Texas swing while there’s a tribute to Milton Brown featuring many of the same players. Hear over here to check them out.

get the album here