Mose Allison
Pianist, vocalist and songwriter who spiced country blues with the sophistication of modern jazz
MOSE ALLISON, who has died aged 89, was one of the most original voices in American popular music. He was an exceptionally good jazz pianist, perhaps the best self-accompanying vocalist since Nat King Cole, and a songwriter of near-genius. As he grew older, critics came to compare him with artists as diverse as Hoagy Carmichael and William Faulkner.
By combining the country blues of his childhood with the sophistication of modern jazz and his own brand of gently sardonic humour, Allison created a unique and engaging style. Although a quintessentially American artist, he attracted a large and faithful audience in Britain. His annual threeweek engagements in London were always fully booked.
Mose John Allison Jnr was born on November 11 1927 at Tippo, near Clarksdale, Mississippi, in the heart of blues country. His father ran the general store and the Allisons were among the small minority of white families in the area. Mose took piano lessons from the age of five, but preferred playing by ear, especially boogie-woogie.
He was introduced to jazz by a cousin who owned a clockwork phonograph. “I was about 14 when electricity came to the Mississippi delta,” he recalled, “and there was a jukebox at the service station that had some blues, and some churchy music and some big bands.”
Allison first played the piano for money at the age of 16, at a local club. “I was still at high school. Actually the place was more like a honky-tonk than a nightclub. At that time you couldn’t buy whisky in Coahoma County, Mississippi, so all the places were run illegally. It was all exciting to me.”
Leaving high school, he studied chemical engineering and economics at the University of Mississippi, served a period in the US Army, playing trumpet in a military band, and returned to university in 1947. “The Army was where I met some top-level players. I was a different person when I went back to Tippo.”
He formed his first trio in 1949. “We went to Louisiana. There was a lot more work and everything was legal! I finished up school at Louisiana State University. I wanted to do something different, so I studied philosophy and English. There was also more work in the Baton Rouge area and some really good players.”
He married his wife, Audré, in 1951, and graduated the following year. After four years of touring around Louisiana and Texas with his trio, Allison decided to try his luck in New York. He made contact with the tenor saxophonist and arranger Al Cohn, who booked him for a recording session. This acted as his introduction to the New York jazz scene, then in its heyday, and he was soon working regularly, first with Al Cohn and Zoot Sims and then for a year as a member of the Stan Getz Quartet.
At first he concentrated purely on his piano playing, but in March 1957 he recorded an album under his own name. Entitled Back Country Suite, it portrayed life in the Mississippi delta and included two vocal pieces which immediately caught the ear of the jazz public, setting the pattern for his future career.
As further albums followed in quick succession – Creek Bank (1958), Autumn Song (1959), The Transfiguration of Hiram Brown (1960) – it soon became clear that Allison was a genuine original. His songs, cast in the style of down-home blues but spiked with wry, metropolitan wit, had the power to raise a rueful smile of recognition among his audience. At the same time, his cool and searching piano kept their musical senses happily employed.
Allison’s career settled into a regular pattern of week-long residencies in jazz clubs, what he called “the disciplined life of a six-night-a-weeker”, which changed very little from one decade to the next. “That’s how I like it. Your whole day is built around being at your best for nine o’clock in the evening. The only way I know to stay in shape as a performer is to keep performing.” Fashions came and went around him. “Oh, I’ve been to and from oblivion several times. My public visibility comes and goes like a revolving door.”
His songs were picked up and covered by Van Morrison, The Who, Bonnie Raitt, Georgie Fame and many others, but among them only Fame managed to catch their authentic tone, and then only occasionally. As he grew older it became obvious that, while not exactly autobiographical, Allison’s songs were based on a progress through life. His 1993 album, The Earth Wants You, contained a classic of benign fatalism entitled I’m a Certified Senior Citizen. He also developed a knack of coining phrases that sounded like folk epigrams, such as “Your mind is on vacation, but your mouth is working overtime”.
“There are always pieces of songs in my head,” he remarked at the age of 65. “It sometimes takes 30 years to put them together, but they’re always stewing.”
Allison’s popularity with London audiences led to a pair of definitive live albums on the Blue Note label, The Mose Chronicles: Live in London, Vols 1 and 2, released in 2000.
Mose Allison is survived by his wife, son and three daughters, one of whom is the singer-songwriter Amy Allison.