Mike Walbridge's Chicago Footwarmers - Crazy Rhythm

Delmark 247

To many, jazz tuba remains an oxymoron. That most portly member of the brass family has played bit parts in the indigenous American idiom for over a century, but any bids at a lasting frontline position have usually met with failure. There are exceptions: Ray Draper’s hardbop and Howard Johnson’s free jazz among them, and Per-Ake Holmlander continues to make convincing strides with the metal elephant in Ken Vandermark’s Territory Bands. Even with these allowances, it’s a safe claim to assert the tuba’s fringe status as a viable vehicle for jazz improvisation.

Chicagoan Mike Walbridge has more modest aims for the instrument. He’s been filling the tuba chair in Windy City trad bands for the better part of a half-century, most notably as a member of the Original Salty Dogs and his own Chicago Footwarmers. This Delmark collection presents bookends to his career thus far, opening with an eight tune August 2007 session recorded forty-one years to the day after the 1966 session that closes out the disc. Another date from ’67 with pianist Johnny Cooper comprises the program’s sandwich meat. The two sessions sans Cooper earn immediate points for their quirky quartet frameworks that dispense with bull fiddle and leave subsequent space for Walbridge to field his horn in a traditional brass bass capacity, blowing lubricous syncopated lines that complement the choppy rhythms set up by banjo and drums. On the leads, his sound is like that of a trombone in a fat suit. Kim Cusack, also present on all three sessions, serves as a noble foil, doubling on clarinet and alto and huffing hotly on both reeds.

The songbook doesn’t deviate far from the usual house rent fare, but there’s really no reason it should. Regardless of how many times “Nagasaki” or “Darktown Strutter’s Ball” gets rolled out, if the band can muster the courage to make them their own, the wheel tread stays largely intact. Despite the obvious novelty appeal of pianoless dates, it’s the five-song arc with Cooper that wins the prize. His presence gooses Walbridge and Cusack into some particularly tempestuous exchanges and banjoist Eddie Lynch and drummer Glen Koch sound similarly primed by the pianist’s sparkplug stride patterns. Tuba may still be the butterball underachiever of the jazz instrument litter, but in Walbridge’s capable hands it garners an overdue boost of confidence and cachet.

~ Derek Taylor