Search - Roger Kellaway :: I Was There: Roger Kellaway Plays from the Bobby Darin Songbook

A thoughtful, very enjoyable tribute

N. Dorward | Toronto, ON Canada | 03/28/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"First things first: Amazon's catalogue has the title wrong at the moment: it's _I Was There: Roger Kellaway Plays from the Bobby Darin Songbook_. And Kellaway _was_ there: he was Darin's pianist for a time in the late 1960s. This tribute was prompted by his work as a music consultant on Spacey's recent Darin biopic (which I haven't seen); it's mostly tunes he played with Darin--classic jazz standards (no "Splish Splash"!), a couple tunes from _Dr Doolittle_ (Darin recorded an album of songs from _Dr Doolittle_, with Kellaway's arrangements), plus the title-track, a Kellaway original. As anyone who's been following Kellaway will expect, this is a very fine solo piano album--a welcome return to jazz from a musician whose activities have often taken him far afield (he's also a classical composer, a film scorer & pop pianist), & I believe it's his first solo piano release since his Maybeck Recital Hall CD on Concord over a decade ago. He's a dazzling player--like a very modern Dave McKenna in a way (even William Bolcom, maybe), with his ability to combine stride and ragtime figures with an absolutely modern sensibility (listen to the wacky polytonality of "I'm Beginning to See the Light" for instance). And he does it all with a lightness and exactness that puts a player like Jaki Byard to shame. On occasion he can go overboard--sometimes this music is _too_ rich--but that's a minor quibble: he's still quite some piano player. He's no singer, though: there's a throwaway track at the end where he adds vocals, & it's pretty dodgy. But that's a forgiveable indulgence given the quality of the rest of the album."