Chris Cortez
MUM IS THE WORD - Blue Bamboo Music,2004, 448 Redbud Dr. Slidell, La 70458. Website: www.chriscortez..net. My Way is Better; Everyday I have the Blues; George On My Mind; Bad Attitude; Sweet Georgia Brown; Honeysuckle Rose; Manha de Carnival; Mum is the Word; Trouble With Larry; Rhythm Method Blues; Lazy River; Avalon.
PERSONNEL: Chris Cortez, Guitar/Vocals; Jeff Mills, Drums; Sam Bruton, Piano; John Wooton, Percussion; Edwin Livingston, Bass; James Singleton, Bass; Larry Panella, Tenor/Alto Sax; Humphrey Davis, Jr., Vocal/Tenor Sax; John Brinson, Organ; John Reed, Fluegel Horn; Billy Bargetzi, Trombone.
Reviewed by Bob Gish
John Keats mistakes Cortez for Balboa in his great sonnet on discovery and exploration, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.” Guitarist and composer Chris Cortez is no Keats or Balboa of Homeric dimensions nor does he exhibit quite the epic heroism of his mistaken Keatsean namesake—or even Sylvester Stalone’s champion Balboa, for that matter.
Make no mistake, however, Chris Cortez is a poet and an explorer, a philosopher and an entertainer, of considerable ability and talent, as this latest CD, Mum Is The Word makes clear.
Keats’ Cortez stands “Silent on a peak in Darien,” to extend the analogy just a bit more, when he first views the Pacific…, and listeners to the seven “standards” and five original compositions in this collection, including the title track, will no doubt experience a mouth-opening, hushed moment or two—not so much in awe but in laughter and admiration.
The entertainment and pleasure—at times wise silliness—of three of the original tunes are enhanced by the availability of the lyrics printed along with the notes and acknowledgements.
Take “Mum” for example. Few follow the cliched but still often advisable folk wisdom, “If you can’t say something nice/Don’t say nothing at all.” But most can relate to Cortez’s “take” on such a philosophy: “There are statements better left un-uttered/There is bread, better left un-buttered.”
Reading the lyrics is, of course, one thing. Hearing them sung from the lyricist’s own mouth is another. And Cortez’s vocals not only bring a personal dimension to the words, they allow them to shine forth rather than seem incidental or separate from the total performance.
Essential to every artist is a performing self, a compulsion—Lorca calls it the duende—that manifests one’s experiences, one’s personhood and individuality amidst the man-swarm of history and humanity—amidst “tradition.” And that’s an extra bonus of this CD…, namely how Cortez juxtaposes long appreciated and revered standards and that “tradition” with direct personal revelation, call it a sharing, even a kind of confessional, about his kids and his wife and their marriage, love, and parenthood in a song so utterly uninhibited and free (from P.C., from prudery) as “Rhythm Method Blues.”
That personal “reality show,” along with his compositions “My Way is Better,” “Bad Attitude” and “Trouble With Larry” (an elegy for his friend Larry Williams) is framed by Cortez’s renditions of such classics as “Georgia on my Mind” (here intended as a memorial to the late Ray Charles), “Sweet Georgia Brown,” “Honeysuckle Rose,” “Lazy River,” and “Avalon.” All are done with flair and poignancy in face of the great ocean of jazz and popular song never deserving of snobbish disparagement and always to be appreciated as expressions of humanity’s predicament—the conundrum of immortal mortality.
Each listener, in turn, will find her or his own way through the wit, wisdom, and entertainment of Mum and Cortez’s explanations and expressions. “Manha de Carnival” dare one say, never had a more tasteful and in-tune (with the conception and context of the song) arrangement and performance. Much of this is due throughout not only to the tonality and technique of Cortez’s adept guitar playing but to the assembly of fine musicians called to the sessions.
Say what you will about the mythic Cortez, and the contemporary musician Chris Cortez, and about Mum is the Word—yes, say something very, very nice.