May Jailer

A year after Les Paul's death, Jeff Beck saluted the guitar pioneer by staging a rousing tribute show to the great man at Paul’s regular stomping ground, the Iridium Jazz Club. Backed by his current running mates the Imelda May Band, Beck enlisted some heavy-hitters for help – Brian Setzer comes in for the rock & roll, Trombone Shorty for the jazz, Gary U.S. Bonds sings some oldies – all the better to get the party started. Despite its title, Rock 'N' Roll Party skews ever so slightly to the old-fashioned swing and standards that were Paul's specialty and with the notable exception of tightly wound versions of “The Train Kept A Rollin’” and “Twenty Flight Rock,” even the rockers feel closer to jump blues than rockabilly. And that’s fine: a tribute to Les Paul's music shouldn’t be greasy, it should be a jumping, joyous blast of nostalgia, which is precisely what this party is.

Monsigny and Sedaine's brilliant opera-cotnique Le Deserteur, was an immediate and lasting success for its melodic charms and musical variety, its blend of comedy with moments of great sentiment and pathos, and its intellectual radicalism prefiguring the humanitarian ideas of the 19th century Romantics. This recording features the musical items only from this forerunner of the 'rescue' opera, in which the heroine Louise extricates her fiance Alexis from prison and a death sentence.