Self Authoring Peterson

As a triple threat, guitarist/organist/singer Lucky Peterson is able to vary the usual repetitive patterns that a full-length album of blues music can fall into, and though the back cover of his self-titled 1999 album advises "File Under: BLUES, " advice we would not dispute, a lot of different bases are covered on the album. "Shake," with the addition of the Late Night Horns, is a convincing remake of the Sam Cooke soul classic, Willie Nelson's "Funny How Time Slips Away" provides a country-style platform for a duet between Peterson and Joe Louis Walker, and the most surprising selection, Bobbie Gentry's "Ode To Billie Joe," turns out to be the outline for an extended instrumental organ solo. In between the stylistic changes of pace, however, there is still plenty of room for the updated Chicago blues in which Peterson specializes, notably on Ernie Isley's "Deal With It," Earl King's "Seduction," and Peterson's own self-descriptive "Tribute To Luther Allison."

Jerome Kern's stage tunes – going back to the late '20s with the acclaimed presentation Show Boat – right up to the '40s, will forever be at the core of quintessential American popular songs that hold a dear place in the heart of all straight-ahead jazz performers. Oscar Peterson's immortal trio with bassist Ray Brown and drummer Ed Thigpen play Kern's themes expertly, with no small degree of interpretation, and a clever angle on these well-worn songs that only Peterson can self-identify with his genius mindset. The title should be more accurately "The Jerome Kern & Friends Songbook," as he always co-wrote with such notables as Oscar Hammerstein II, Otto Harbach, Ira Gershwin, and Dorothy Fields, but these are all instrumental versions of his priceless musical scores and are immediately familiar without lyrics.