A scary good jazz time.
Michael Blake – Halloween Tales – [TrackList follows] – self-released; 50:29 [9/25/26] ****:
(Michael Blake – tenor and soprano saxophones, producer; Gary Versace – piano; Ben Allison – bass, mixing, mastering, co-producer; Michael Sarin – drums)
When Halloween arrives its often time for some appropriate horror cinema, or something else apt for the season of pumpkin carving, candy corn and costumes. It can also be a time for listening to like-minded music. New York saxophonist Michael Blake (John Lurie’s Lounge Lizards, The Herbie Nichols Project, and almost 20 titles as leader or co-leader) has an album just right with his nine-track, self-released collection Halloween Tales. Over the course of 50 minutes Blake, pianist Gary Versace (who has been in bands led by Andy Laverne, Ellery Eskelin, and others), bassist Ben Allison (credits include Ted Nash, Peggy Stern, more) and drummer Michael Sarin (Broken Arm Trio, Mark Dresser, many others) do jazz interpretations of music associated with Mel Brooks, Snoopy and the Peanuts gang, Duke Ellington and more. This is not novelty music. Rather, Blake and his group provide intriguing and dynamic changes to familiar and little-known material.
The quartet begins with the forbidding main theme from John Carpenter’s classic 1978 thriller film Halloween. Carpenter’s brooding keyboard original is shifted by Blake: from a suspenseful opening section into a swinging second half fronted by bright, sometimes sonorous sax and brisk rhythmic pacing. Another well-known piece has a different timbre, Vince Guaraldi’s “Great Pumpkin Waltz” is from the 1966 animated television special It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. While Guaraldi’s version featured a sextet which included flute, woodwinds, trumpet and other instrumentation, Blake pares down to concentrate on sax and piano solos while stretching the tune to over seven minutes. The foursome also tackle Guaraldi’s less-familiar “Breathless,” also from It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Blake maintains Guaraldi’s brief and minimal structure, but adds more tempo particularly from Allison’s lithesome bass lines.
Another track which comes from a Halloween-oriented animated project is Danny Elfman’s gorgeous “Sally’s Song” from 1993’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. Elfman’s arrangement owes a debt to Kurt Weill. On the other hand, Blake’s adaptation is modified into a memorable jazz ballad with somber sax, late-night piano and midnight-laced bass and drums. Listener’s can almost hear Sally lamenting for her love, Jack Skellington. Another pleasing piece which moves from ballad territory to groove aspects is an eight-minute rendition of “Transylvanian Lullaby” from Mel Brook’s 1975 monster movie parody, Young Frankenstein. Blake’s sinuous sax expressively takes the place of the film’s violin and the quartet proves John Morris’s orchestral score can be turned into first-class jazz.
There also two Ellington compositions which are not from fright films, but do have perturbing or impish elements. Up first is the seldom-heard “Stalking Monster,” the second movement of Ellington’s 1963 symphonic Night Creature, performed with the Stockholm Symphony Orchestra, which was issued a year later as part of 1964’s The Symphonic Ellington. Blake’s quartet sustains a slight boogie woogie positioning and it’s wonderful to appreciate this gem without strings and an emphasis on the playful theme and sprightly melody. The second Ellington cut is an interpretation of the principal theme from the 1959 legal drama movie, Anatomy of a Murder. Blake and Versace lock in and form a penetrating piano/sax conversation while the bass and drums create a multifaceted beat underscoring the swinging mannerism.
The only typical jazz standard is “Witchcraft,” made famous by Frank Sinatra and later done by pianist Bill Evans, Marvin Gaye, Ella Fitzgerald and countless other musicians. Blake doesn’t do anything radical or different but “Witchcraft” agreeably fits in with the album’s subject matter. The only Blake original has an Ellington connection. The closing “The Creep” is inspired by Ellington’s “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo” as well as Charles Mingus’s “Fables of Faubus.” Blake’s work dates to the late 1980s and was initially done as a witty political number but grew into something else; it starts out meditative and transforms into a spirited track.
TrackList:
Halloween
Stalking Monster
The Great Pumpkin Waltz
Transylvanian Lullaby (Theme to Young Frankenstein)
Breathless
Sally’s Song
Anatomy of a Murder
Witchcraft
The Creep
—Doug Simpson
