Marko Melkon (Traditional Crossroads)

“One of the most beloved cabaret musicians of New York’s 8th Avenue Middle Eastern club scene of the 1950s”- so asserts the blurb on back of this Traditional Crossroads comp and it’s not an overstatement. Udist Marko Melkon did much to popularize his lute-like, watermelon-shaped stringed instrument on American shores, but he accomplished it with ears, fingers and intellect attuned to custom and tradition. Like Markos Vamvakaris, his Greek counterpart on bouzouki, Melkon subtly tailored his songbook of folk melodies and rhythms to the fickle tastes of his Westernized audiences without ceding any of their old country integrity. The 21 tracks here, most rescued from heirloomed sides on long defunct labels like Kaliphon and Me-Re, furnish an edifying extract of his lionized career. Many of the tracks suggest a soundtrack equally at home in a bustling Turkish market or a Lower Manhattan speakeasy stage. Melkon works mostly with a small revolving ensemble of violin, kanun, dumbek and finger cymbals. Gliding microtones abound in the string playing and the leader’s vocals make for pathos-padded counterpoint to the serpentine structures of the tunes. There’s even a small clutch of brilliantly executed solo taksims that zero in on Melkon’s adroit fingering skills and substantiate his storied standing among peers. The set caps with an incongruous artifact: “Asia Minor” an early Armenian/Afro-Cuban alloy that finds Melkon’s amplified axe fronting his son-in-law Roger Mozian’s jazz band. It can’t hold a clave to Machito’s majestic version of the tune, but Melkon does manage to summon some masterful Dick Dale-presaging tremolo in the closing seconds. This set is just one of several Traditional Crossroads discs celebrating canonical doyens of the ud. Others of note include compendiums of work by Udi Hrant Kenkulian and Udi Yorgo Bacanos.